Bob Maas

Bob Maas was born in the Dutch East Indies, where his father ran a medicine importing business. The family, including his brother Jan Maas, moved to the Netherlands in 1915, settling in Hilversum, but moved to the US for a few years afterwards. The Maas brothers both travelled to Los Angeles for the 1932 Olympics, with Bob unusually participating in two events.

In his solo boat, the Snowbird (a 1-person dinghy), Maas seemed to have captured the gold medal, sailing out his last race carefully without fighting for a win. His French opponent Jacques Baptiste Lebrun, however, successfully contested an earlier penalty after the competition had ended, which moved him into first place, and relegated Maas to silver.

The Maas brothers placed 6th in the Star, which was to become Bob Maas’s boat of preference. At the 1936 Olympics, he won a bronze medal in that boat, sailing with Willem de Vries Lentsch. After the War, he returned to the Olympics twice more, earning his third medal, another bronze in the 1948 Star, now pairing Eddy Stutterheim.

Maas only once participated in the Star World Championships, which were generally held in the US during his career. When they were held in Kiel, in 1939, he only ranked 18th. Maas, who imported US cars and sold them in Utrecht, continued to sail competitively into the 1960s, although with diminishing successes. In 2009, the Dutch Sailing Federation first staged the annual Bob Maas Trofee, a Star competition.