Race Day 8 Report
Written by RYA | 05 August 2012
The Best of the Rest
Sailors Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark hold a one point advantage at the top of the 470 class leaderboard at the end of day eight of the Olympic Sailing Regatta at London 2012 (Sunday 5 August).
The pair, who are competing in the two-person dinghy class, picked up scores of sixth and first in their two races today to leapfrog overnight leaders, Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie (NZL), into pole position.
The 470 Women now head into a rest day tomorrow (Monday 6 August) and are scheduled to resume with races seven and eight of their event from 12.05pm on Tuesday. The 470 Women’s medal race is scheduled for Friday 10 August (1pm).
Windsurfer Nick Dempsey heads into Tuesday’s double points RS:X Men’s medal race in silver medal position.
The Athens 2004 bronze medallist collected scores of ninth and second today to put himself in with a great chance of bettering his Olympic result of eight years ago.
The Netherlands’ Dorian Van Rijsselberge secured an unassailable lead at the top of the fleet to wrap up the gold medal before the final medal race today.
But Dempsey holds the cards in the race for silver, currently sitting 11 points clear of Toni Wilhelm (GER) in bronze medal position and 17 points ahead of Przemyslaw Miarczynski (POL) who occupies fourth spot.
Every point is worth two in the medal race meaning that Demspey needs to finish in ninth place or higher to secure a medal.
Dempsey said: "I knew he [Dorian] had won halfway through the first race. He deserves it. I don't feel too bad. It's not like I lost it, more like he won it. He sailed better than me and deserved to win. I don't feel completely confident, [about winning silver] there's a lot that could go wrong."
The RS:X Men head into a rest day tomorrow (Monday 6 August) before Tuesday’s medal race, which is scheduled to take place on the spectator Nothe course at 1pm.
Bryony Shaw kept her windsurfing medal hopes alive after picking up her first race win of London 2012 on day eight of the Olympic Regatta at Weymouth and Portland today (Sunday 5 August).
The Tunbridge Wells athlete posted an impressive race win and a credible fifth in her two races today out on Portland Harbour course. With the RS:X Women’s medal race taking place in front of the Nothe spectator course on Tuesday, Shaw currently sits 11 points off bronze and silver medal positions – with the athletes currently occupying those two positions, Lee-El Korzits (ISR) and Tuuli Petäjä (FIN) tied on 38 points - heading into the deciding double-pointer.
The Beijing 2008 bronze medallist currently occupies seventh overall. With a new lease of life after securing her first race win of the London 2012 Sailing regatta, Shaw insists she will go out on Tuesday and do her best.
“Throughout the week it’s not really been my regatta so I was happy to get a win today and have a smile on my face and enjoy it. I’ll just go out there after the rest day (Monday) and try to do my best in the medal race and try and put on a good show.”
Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes head into the final two series races of their London 2012 regatta tomorrow looking to tighten their grip on a medal. The pair currently sit in bronze medal position following scores of 13th and third from their two races today.
Morrison and Rhodes hold a small three point advantage over Portugal’s Bernardo Freitas and Francisco Rebello De Andrade in fourth place, and the Brits can still catch Peter Burling and Blair Tuke (NZL) for the silver medal. Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen (AUS) hold an almost unassailable lead in the chase for gold.
The 49er class has the most series races – 15 – before their double points’ medal race, which is scheduled to take place on Wednesday (8 August) at 1pm.
Morrison said: “We had a great start in the first race but it was patchy wind and we thought we were doing the right things, we were perfectly happy with what we did in the first race but a band of wind filled in and we were on the wrong side of a shift. We were happy with how we executed our plan it just didn’t quite happen to be the right thing in hindsight but I don’t think we could have done anything different.
“The second race we did exactly the same thing and there wasn’t a random gust from the right, it did come from the left as we had predicted. We had a good solid windward mark rounding and were going fast. We’re always confident, we’re sailing well, we’re making life really hard for ourselves but we’ll keep going, we want it more than anything and we think we’ve got the skills and the equipment to do it.
“We just need to put in a really solid day tomorrow and make sure when we’ve finished tomorrow we’ve still got a chance to win a medal.”
The Olympic Sailing Regatta runs from Sunday 29 July – Saturday 11 August.
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