Bjorn Bergvall hung over a blue sea with Naples, Italy, behind him. From the trapeze of his sailboat, he could almost see the wind. The water changed color just before the gusts reached him. His friend and the skipper of the dinghy, Peder Lunde Jr., sat at his side.
A series of unlikely events led the two young men here, setting sail in the 1960 Olympics. Through even stranger chance, two weeks after winning a gold medal Bergvall washed up at the University of Idaho.
“What we did was sort of one-off,” Bergvall said.
In 1960, the Flying Dutchman class, a small two-man dinghy, would make its Olympic debut. Lunde, an 18-year-old Norwegian, approached the 21-year-old Bergvall with a proposition. He asked if Bergvall wanted to try and qualify for the Olympics in a Flying Dutchman.
Lunde’s family had long been renowned in Olympic sailing. His grandfather won a gold medal in 1924, and his parents had earned silver in 1952. Bergvall also had spent much of his life on the water with friends and family in various boats but didn’t have the competitive experience of Lunde.
Bergvall agreed and they began sailing in February 1960, with ice still on the Oslo fjord. They sailed a heavy fiberglass dinghy from Lunde’s father.
With the Olympics only months away, the two had some difficult hurdles ahead of them. The first obstacle was a 1,300-mile journey to their first regattas in Monaco, Italy. To make the trip, they borrowed a red 1950s Opel Rekord from Bergvall’s brother-in-law. Between nights sleeping in tents, they took turns driving. Lunde had just been given his driver’s license in February.
Somewhere in the middle of the German Autobahn, the trip took a turn for the worse. The old Rekord broke down. They were able to get it repaired with money wired from home, but it was just a hint of the challenges that were in store for them.
In Italy, they were told they couldn’t sail the boat they had. Most dinghies in the Flying Dutchman class were made of lighter plywood at the time, and the heavy fiberglass exceeded the weight limit. They were dead in the water. But an Italian company, Alpa, had a newer fiberglass boat under the weight limit and allowed Lunde and Bergvall to borrow it.
The races still didn’t go swimmingly. They were up against long-time sailors. The young men struggled, even capsizing. But they left armed with experience and a new dinghy, Sirene.
Lunde’s old boat, Bergvall said, was left for Alpa.
“We got lots of bills from Alpa saying, ‘You’ve taken the wrong boat home, you haven’t paid for it,’” Bergvall said, chuckling.
After selections, Bergvall and Lunde still hadn’t qualified for the Olympics. Now they needed a miracle to compete. But the skipper who qualified abruptly withdrew, disliking his recent racing results. The unlikely pair got their chance and qualified, and in August traveled back to Italy. This time for the Summer Olympics.
In Naples, they ran into old acquaintances with a debt to settle: Alpa. But somehow, even that worked out.
“They were so excited that we had made it to the Olympics in their boat, there was no more question about paying for the boat,” Bergvall said laughing again.
Bergvall said it was the first of seven races that set the pace. As the men neared the finish, leading the pack, a wire holding their mast broke. The mast went down, but Lunde was able to let out the sail, managing to keep it upright. Bergvall, who hung out on the trapeze, had to balance carefully to keep it out of the water.
“If the mast had gone totally overboard, we would have lost the race,” Bergvall said. “And now we finished second.”
The rest of the races were smooth sailing. By the final race, Lunde and Bergvall built up such a lead there was only one team that could beat them. Before it even began, Bergvall said a naval ship practiced the Norwegian anthem on the sidelines.
Their only rivals were the Danes, skippered by Hans Fogh. Playing a game of strategy, Lunde and Bergvall focused solely on keeping Denmark’s flag behind them. The Norwegians finished 10th, but successfully stayed ahead of Fogh.
“They were so mad when they came to shore, because they said we had put them so far back they would lose silver,” Bergvall said.
But the Danish still placed second overall, almost 800 points behind Lunde and Bergvall, who took home Norway’s only gold medal of the Olympics.
Two weeks later, Bergvall’s unlikely journey continued. He was off to Idaho, where he had signed up to be a foreign-exchange student bunking in the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house.
“He was a commanding figure when he came into the Fiji house,” said Kent Valley, Bergvall’s Fiji fraternity brother. “It didn’t take us long to learn that he had just won the gold medal.”
Valley remembered holding Bergvall’s medal. It was a heavy, beautiful piece. All the brothers in the house admired it.
Over the course of two years, Bergvall said he bonded with friendly folks all over. He fondly recalled drinking beers with his brothers at the Fiji house, traveling all over North America with the UI Alpine Ski Team and crewing on a 12-meter Weatherly in pretrials for the America’s Cup during a summer.
Bergvall’s adventures with Lunde didn’t stop there. In 1962, Bergvall qualified for the NCAA Alpine Ski Championships, but couldn’t attend because he was competing in the World Sailing Championships in Florida. Lunde and Bergvall, in their Olympic boat Sirene, finished fourth.
A year later they sailed their last race together on Lake Muiden in Holland. While there, they stayed in the house of Dutch sailmaker Jan Jongkind. Jongkind crafted the genoa sail they used in the Olympics.
Bergvall remembered it was particularly windy, which made racing difficult. In the first race they capsized and had to withdraw. They won the third and fourth races but were beaten by England in points.
Lunde competed in the Olympics three more times. In the 1968 Mexico City Games, he won the silver medal sailing in the Star class.
At ages 79 and 82, Lunde and Bergvall both still live in Oslo. More than 60 years after their Olympic adventure, they still meet socially from time to time but haven’t sailed since. These days, Bergvall said he has been doing more golfing than sailing. Lunde has some limitations with getting around.
But every so often, their conversation turns to the blue water of Naples and the unlikely events of 1960. They’re back on Sirene and about to get Norway’s only gold medal.
Cody Roberts can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @CodyRobReports
Earl Roberts
Nice ride I took reading about the favorite sport of my family. Let's go sailing some time. You captured the adventure well. You must be a sailor yourself?
Mitchell J Sonnen
Very nice article, Cody, very nice.