Appeal to Sponsors - Help us sail for Canada at the 2000 Olympics in Australia.

Dear Sponsor:

I am writing to you regarding sponsorship for me and my skipper Jason Kobrick. For the past 4 years we have been racing in a Laser 2 - a double-handed 14-foot dingy development class boat. We are 18 years and 20 years old and race out of the Island Yacht Club in Toronto. In our first regatta together in 1993, we placed 2nd out of 55 boats at the Ontario 16 and under championships. At the 1994 North American championships, during CORK (Canadian Olympic-training Regatta at Kingston), we placed 14th out of a 125 boat fleet. Since 1995 we have been members of the Ontario Sailing Association's official sailing team. This group consists of the top two boats in each of the dingy classes. We have received elite athlete training during the winter and coaching from the OSA during the summer regattas. We are now ranked number 2 in NORTH AMERICA in the Laser 2 class. I would be happy to provide you with a letter from the OSA and/or the Island Yacht Club confirming our ranking and status.

In the summer of 1997 we again took on an aggressive regatta schedule. In addition to the Laser 2 we began training in a 470 this summer also. This is a double-handed Olympic-class boat in preparation for our participationn as part of the Canadian team at an Olympic class event - the 15th Maccabiah Games, July 14 - 24, in Israel. I am pleased to report that we won the bronze medal in this event. During the balance of the summer we also competed in North American regattas. All this effort is aimed at qualifying for the 2000 Summer Olympic Games.

The main purpose of this letter is to ask for assistance in the form of sponsorship or donations for our upcoming Olympic Games campaign. We will need to spend the next two years in an intensive training program. This is a significant commitment, especially when you consider that we are both full-time students. Your pledge of any amount will help our dream become a reality. All donations are tax deductible and receipts will be issued. Please make your cheque payable to Rolf Wagschal and Jason Kobrick Olympic Campain and mail it c/o Léon Wagschal, 414 Rosemary Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5P 3E5. If you represent a company that would prefer to support our efforts through the donation of sailing supplies like sails, clothing or other equipment please e-mail us at rolf@coleo.com and we will be happy to give the specifications of our needs.

Any funds and/or support that you could provide would be gratefully appreciated, and although the sailing rules disallow sponsors' logos etc. to be affixed to any part of a boat during a regatta, sailors are allowed to wear endorsements in the form of hats, shirts, patches that can be affixed to life-jacket, wetsuits, banners hanging on boat trailers, and so on. At a typical regatta in total there are anywhere from seventy-five to five hundred sailors, as well as coaches, spectators and media. Also, despite the rule about logos being attached to the boat during a regatta, there is no such rule when it comes to training, and seeing as how my skipper and I train in the Toronto inner harbour, a sticker attached to the sails would be extremely visible to the many tour boats and ferries that we encounter each day. This summer we will be travelling to Manitoba, Quebec, Nova Scotia and various international locations for local, provincial, regional and national regattas.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at my e-mail address. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thanks to Sponsors

Thank you to the 88 private individuals and corporations who generously donated over $10,000 to our Maccabiah campaign. We will soon be sending each of you a personal letter of thanks together with a picture of us in Israel wearing our bronze medal. Without your help we would never have made it to the Games!

Thanks to Rip N Hammer for their generous support of Rolf Wagschal. Great shirts and shorts for comfortable sailing!