21-Year-Old Bay Area Sailor Hoel Menard Embarks on Olympic Campaign

While the world gears up for the start of the 2026 Winter Olympics in northern Italy, we have exciting news about the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. It was recently announced that a local 21-year-old sailor, Hoel Menard, is campaigning for the Games in the Nacra 17 class with Paris 2024 Olympian Sarah Newberry Moore.

Menard grew up racing on the Richmond Yacht Club (RYC) and San Francisco Yacht Club (SFYC) Opti teams, competing both nationally and internationally. After outgrowing the bathtubs, Menard made the big leap straight into racing Nacra 15s with the support of RYC and St. Francis Yacht Club (StFYC). After several years in the Nacra 15, Menard focused on racing 29ers, first with San Diego sailor Kelly Holthus, and then with current Stanford Sailing senior Sophie Fisher. While in the 29er class, Menard finished third at the Orange Bowl Regatta with Holthus, and finished 19th out of 190 boats at the 29er Worlds while racing with Fisher.

Throughout the years, Menard has been an avid and incredibly successful Waszp sailor, finishing 12th in the Waszp Worlds, and second in the US Waszp Nationals. In the world of keelboats, he has served as the tactician and main trimmer on Zach Berkowitz’s J/100 Feather, helping the team win its division in the Rolex Big Boat Series the past two years.

“I was really fortunate to grow up between three yacht clubs in the Bay Area that offered so many different people who were great mentors,” Menard tells Latitude about his Bay Area sailing education. “I think names that come to mind are Hill Blackett (he goes by “Buzz”) from RYC, and Zach Berkowitz from St. Francis. I’d say those two have been really great mentors locally in the Bay.”

Menard officially became Sarah Newberry Moore’s new Olympic campaign crew in late 2025, after she had sailed with another RYC sailor, David Liebenberg, in the Paris 2024 Olympics. Newberry Moore, who welcomed her second child into the world in early 2025, was looking for a new crew. Menard was one of the last crews to try out with her in late November, and several days later the two agreed to campaign together.

“Sarah’s got a ton more experience than I do,” Menard tells us of the duo’s dynamic. “She’s on her third Olympic campaign, and she went to Paris in 2024, so she brings a lot of that experience: that calmness and guidance in terms of big-picture campaign things. On the boat, we work really well together in terms of helping each other with our own personal jobs. Like, what I can do with my sheeting to make her life easier and the boat faster. If she’s struggling with something, my mindset is, ‘what can I do to help?’ and if I’m struggling with something her mindset is, ‘what can she do to help [me]?’”

Most of the duo’s training has taken place in Miami, Newberry Moore’s hometown. Menard is still a college student, and as he finishes up his senior year at UCLA, he will have to balance the demands of an Olympic campaign with the demands of college.

“The first regatta of the season is the Trofeo Princesa Sofia, which is in Palma [de Mallorca], Spain, but we decided not to attend that,” Menard tells us of their schedule. “Our first regatta will be the Worlds in France in May. We feel that with me balancing school and campaigning, that that is the best way for us to be the most prepared and be ready to tackle our first event; not rushing into a race.”

“Our goal there is to check in with the fleet, make sure we’re happy with the direction we’ve chosen for the settings and the development of our platform, and test our racing comms and how we put together a strategy and tactics as a team,” Menard says. “Continuing on that, I graduate school right after Worlds, and we’re going to start training full-time and put a lot of focus into the second half of the year. We’re going to train for a month in Kiel, Germany. We’re going to race in Kieler Woche and Europeans, which are also in Kiel. The goal there is to train with the international fleet and get up to speed. There will be areas where we’re missing things because we’re training on our own most of the time. We want to find those areas and work on them.”

After their summer swing in northern Germany, the duo will spend time training in Miami and Los Angeles, as well as another stint in Europe.

One of the many challenges of Olympic campaigning is the fundraising. Menard noted that while sailing has never been a cheap sport at the level where he has competed for most of his life, the Olympic campaign side of fundraising is no joke.

“Olympic campaigns cost a lot of money, and we’re funded by donations,” Menard tells us. “Richmond Yacht Club is super-helpful in terms of supporting us, but there’s so much grassroots support. Putting the pieces together from smaller amounts of money. It’s definitely a ‘strength in numbers’ mentality.”

Latitude 38 will be following Menard and Newberry Moore’s campaign closely, and wishing them the best. Stay tuned to ‘Lectronic Latitude and the print edition of the magazine for more coverage of their campaign.

You can donate to their Olympic campaign here.

You can visit their campaign page here.