Interview with Daniel Escudero
Daniel Escudero has chalked up quite a 2024, which combined disappointment at the US Olympic trials along with major victories at events like ILCA North Americans and most recently winning college nationals in the ILCA 7. He also recently became a member of the American Yacht Club. We caught up with him about his journey and lessons learned sailing at the highest levels.
Daniel was originally born in Germany, spent some of his youth in Canada, and ultimately lived his high school years in the USA where he fell in love the the ILCA class. While he had some exposure to sailing as a kid, keelboat racing with his parents in Canada, he really caught the bug while attending a learn-to-sail camp at age 13. At the end of the summer, he did a laser regatta in Toronto. The wind was ripping and he was still inexperienced in the Laser. He remembers doing terribly but absolutely loving it. On the drive back from the regatta, he told his parents that he wanted to quit soccer to focus on sailing.
At the time, the family lived in Georgia. Daniel had, as he put it, “no coach and no clue,” but his parents took him to every regatta they could get to. At the same time, his sister Amaya, who currently sails for the German Sailing Team in the ILCA 6, also decided to pursue sailing. The Escudero parents decided to support their kids as far as they wanted to take it.
At some point, another parent introduced them to the youth program at Lauderdale Yacht Club. Every weekend he could get away, Daniel went down to train and learn from the exceptional coaching staff at LYC. By his junior year of high school, he was going every weekend. We asked if Olympic aspirations were his motivator back then. Daniel said no, that didn’t emerge until much later. He just loved to sail, especially on those days when the wind was nuking and he could ride a huge ocean swell.
Daniel decided to attend Webb Institute on Long Island, a small college focused entirely on naval architecture and marine engineering. It didn’t hurt that he was 2 minutes away from his laser and sailing on the Long Island Sound. From his freshman year on, Daniel has kept up a rigorous schedule, with 5 classes a day, at least 2 sailing sessions per week, weightlifting 2-3 days, and about 80 miles cycling with a local team, not to mention traveling to major regattas.
We asked if his studies had helped his sailing. Daniel said, “Absolutely. Studying the physics reinforces what is going on in the boat. For example, I learned about free surface effects, which occur when liquids in the hull create instability. For tankers this is a huge problem, but a Laser is no different. If you have water in your cockpit, not only are you heavier but you have this free surface problem where your roll motions slow down. I was able to calculate just how much even 1 inch of water in the cockpit would reduce the righting moment [A measure of the tendency to return the vessel to the upright].”
In 2020, he switched from the ILCA 6 rig to the ILCA 7, which came with a new learning curve. He found the unwinds particularly challenging, realizing that he had to be fitter, stronger and more aggressive with the bigger rig. During COVID, he had an opportunity to head to Portugal to train with coach Miguel Andrade. The caliber of sailors training alongside pushed his technique to a new level. Europe takes ILCA sailing and youth development in the class much more seriously than the USA, so Daniel started spending every summer over there.
By his Junior year of college, Daniel was competing in the major regattas in Europe. “I wasn’t doing great in terms of results,” he said. “I was pushing myself hard because I still had so many fundamentals to work on. Arguably I was sailing and training too much and not resting enough.” Still, he felt that the tradeoff of weaker results for a higher pace of learning was the right one. By the time he reached the 2023 Senior European Championships, he realized he could race against the best, but along with that came a second realization: if he was going to shoot for the Olympics, he needed to take a year off. Trying to balance sailing and course work was stretching him too far.
Training mostly in Europe, he continued to make great strides with his sailing. “After every regatta, I would look at my mistakes. My general approach was to chase my most crucial weakness until I solved it and then move on to the next.”
Then he got hit by two big setbacks. At the 2023 North American champs, he was winning the regatta with a drop race to spare but got U-flagged twice on the last day. And then came the Olympic trials in February.
Daniel came in fifth at the trials — a major disappointment. “I realized that I was putting too much pressure on myself,” he said. “It’s hard to explain, but it comes down to one or two decisions each race. If you’re not in the right headspace, you’ll be impatient or not analytical enough.”
He’d been focusing on the mental side of the game, but it never really clicked. “After trials, I was burnt out and didn’t sail for a month,” Daniel said. “I decided to sail not for results but to enjoy it. It was an important mental switch for me.”
Daniel’s results since that moment have been striking. In the USA, he won the 2024 ILCA North Americans and Atlantic Coast Champs in the ILCA 7. Over in Germany, he came in second at the EuropaCup Germany. And most recently on November 9th & 10th, he won the college national championship in the ILCA 7 (the Glen S. Foster Trophy), giving Webb their first ever college sailing national championship win.
Winning North Americans wasn’t easy. He was behind coming into the last day and was fighting a cold and fever. Before the last race, he almost sailed in. In order to win, he had to match race the leader, win the race and get boats between them. But that’s exactly what he did, winning the last race and edging out the Canadian in the regatta by two points. “I’m proud of how I match raced,” he said, “and of sticking it out to the end.”
We asked Daniel for a highlight from the recent college nationals. “I don’t think I had great starts,” he said, “and in one race I hadn’t noticed the starting sequence and was late by a good 5 or ten seconds. I smashed the right and over-stood the layline. That day, we had head-on waves on starboard and I noticed that most people were fighting the waves close-hauled, but it’s better in those conditions to put your bow down. That’s how they sail in Europe. I ended up reaching over everyone and being third to round the top mark.”
Right now Daniel is focused on finishing his final year at Webb, but he’ll be joining our frostbiting ranks at AYC in February. He says a 2028 Olympic campaign is not out of the question, but the most important thing is that he’s really enjoying sailing again.
