McIntosh, Jr., John - 2007
John McIntosh, Jr. was born in Savannah in 1948. He started sailing as a boy with his family at the Savannah Yacht Club. He began racing at age seven as a crew for Hammond Eve in the Savannah Yacht Club’s Penguin Class. At age eight, he graduated to skipper his own Penguin. Spending a lot of his teenage years sailing and racing, McIntosh finished second to his father in many regional regattas, winning a few when his father was not entered. He also taught sailing lessons to hundreds of children at the Savannah Yacht Club. He graduated from the University of Georgia and was commissioned into the U.S. Navy as an ensign. He spent four and a half years on active duty and represented the Navy in some races. John McIntosh, Jr. had a very successful career in racing and in 1992 was asked by Billy Payne, president and CEO of the Atlanta Commission for the Olympic Games, to be a sport advisor to the commission while preparing for the 1996 event. He was later named yachting competition manager for the Atlanta Commission for the Olympic Games. It was a tremendous responsibility to be in charge of the biggest sporting event ever to be held in Savannah. These were the largest yachting games to date, consisting of 450 competing athletes from 78 countries, with twenty-two countries medaling. Yachting had the most countries participating of all the Olympic sports. He had to recruit and train eight hundred volunteers. He represented the Atlanta Commission for the Olympic Games at the bi-annual meetings of the International Yacht Racing Union in London, Hamburg, Toronto, and Warsaw. He organized and managed a number of regattas in preparing for the Olympics. John received the gratitude of all who participated in the 1996 Olympics for his dedication to the games and to the sailors of the world. John McIntosh, Jr. reflected honor or Savannah, the United States, and the Olympic movement.