RIO DE JANEIRO _ Luther Carpenter's first time on a sailboat was in Clear Lake, a body of water that doesn't exactly live up to its name between Houston and Galveston, Texas. He was 7. His mother took him and two siblings out in a tiny boat with no cockpit, and the crew all but mutinied.
"We got back to shore," Carpenter said, "and told her we'd never do that again."
And now he's the coach of the team that's won more Olympic sailing medals than any other.
Over more than three decades affiliated with U.S. Olympic Sailing, Carpenter has helped four American teams win medals in three types of boats in six Olympics.
Which you probably wouldn't expect from a guy living in La Porte, Texas. Olympic sailing types hail from San Diego or Cape Cod, Mass., or Key West, Fla.
They don't come from a refinery town just down Highway 225 from Pasadena, Texas.
Actually, this is how Carpenter's itinerary worked out: Born in Atlanta, he grew up in Louisiana, where his father taught at LSU. They occasionally spent summers in La Porte, on Sylvan Beach. After the initial terror, the family responded well to his mother's interests in sailing. Pretty soon his father took it up, too, with all the scholarly interest you'd expect of a professor. Next thing you know, they're racing sailboats.
The lake they frequented near Baton Rouge, La., wasn't much nicer than Clear Lake, and it was mostly small-time racing, but Carpenter diligently worked his way up, eventually landing a gig that takes him all over the world.
And he still got back to Texas.
How did that happen?
"Found a nice Texas woman," he said, smiling.
Lisa Carpenter is from La Porte, actually. They lived there 11 years before moving last month to Cypress, Texas, northwest of Houston.
Cypress isn't exactly Cape Cod, either, but it works.
