Today's Sailing News 

 Olympic Sailing Day 7

Day 7 saw the last classes to begin sailing the single handed Finn's and the 2 man Star boats begin sailing.  The Mistral sailboards and the 470 fleets had the day off.

Weather: 

Day 8 looks like it should have some consistent 10-15 knot sea breezes.

Star: 

Day 7 was the day for the first races for the Star class.  In this writer's opinion this class should be the regatta's best.  All 16 teams in the class have distinguished themselves in international competition.  

Day 1 was typical of Star regatta's with good finishes throughout the fleet.

Race 1 was won by Walker and Covell of Great Britain.  Spain was 2nd, with defending gold medallist Torben Grael of Brazil 3rd.  

Another characteristic of Star regatta's is that even the best take deep finishes.  In race 1 it was New Zealand winners at the recent North American Championship finishing last.

No matter New Zealand swung to the other end of the pendulum in race 2 with a win.  2nd was Italy and 3rd was the American team of Reynolds and Liljerdahl.

Taking a turn to the back of the fleet this time was Brazil in 13th.

After 2 races Spain (6th at the 2000 worlds) is only team with under 10 points.  With 6 they are 1st.  Next is Great Britain (5th 2000 worlds) with 10 and Italy with 11.

9 more boats including gold medallists and world champions are within 6 points.

The USA's team is 10th, one of four teams with 17 points.

This deep fleet should produce the hardest fought medals of the entire regatta.

Course: E

Europe Women's Singlehanded Dinghy's

Course: D

This fleet sailed their 5th and 6th races on Course D with the Lasers.

Sailor of the day in this class was Serena Armato of Argentina with a pair of 2nd's.  These finishes lifted Armato to 3rd place.

Shirley Robertson of Great Britain is the leader with a win in the first race and a discarded 13th in the second race.  

Robertson's lead is 9 points over world champion Kristine Rouge of Denmark.

The USA's Courtenay Becker Dey had another tough day placing 14th and 19th.  Dey is in 16th place.

Laser

Course D

It was also the 5th and 6th races for the Laser's on Course D.  For the first time their was a race winner besides Great Britain's Ainslie or Brazil's Shceidt.

The days 1st race was won by South Africa's is Gareth Blanckenberg.  In his diary on the Sail Coach website, he wrote: "My speed upwind took me back into a comfortable first place. I held this position until the finish."

Also in the first race Poland was 2nd and Portugal 3rd.  Ainslie was 4th, with Scheidt ending in 12th.

Race 2 saw Scheidt bounce back and win.  American John Myrdal was 2nd.  This countered his first race when he was scored OCS.  Myrdal also has a 4th in his 19th place score line.  However, the rest of this races are all in the double digits.

After 6 races Ainslie of Great Britain leads Scheidt by 4 points.Scheidt has 3 wins, to Ainslie's 2.  However, Ainslie has stayed in the top 10, while the Brazilian currently counts a 12th.  3rd is Australia's Michael Blackburn 12 points out of 2nd.

The Lasers and the Europe's both have 2 days off before racing again.

Discuss Olympic Sailing in the Sailing Daily Forum

Sign Up For ATWOS
Receive  Sailing news weekly with  Around the World of Sailing 
Enter E-mail address:

 Today's Sailing News 

Up to this point the regatta has seen all fleet racing.  Today the Soling's began head to head match racing.  

More medals were clinched in the 49er and Tornado classes.

49ers

Course: B

The 2 man skiffs sailed 4 races.  They have just one race left to their Olympic Regatta.

On the basis of four top 3 finishes in a row the Finnish team of Jarvi Jyrki and Thomas Johansson has won the Gold Medal.  They are 12 points ahead of 2nd place Great Britain.  The USA's Mckee brothers fell to 3rd after undistinguished results of: 11,7,6,11.  They have a 12 point lead on 4th place Spain.  Spain won 2 of the 4 races sailed.  Also sailing well was New Zealand with a pair of 2nd's.

The remaining race will have to have dramatic shifts to upset the podium order.  

Soling Match Racing Round Robin 1

Course: A

The Soling keelboats began their match racing phase on Course A.  This round robin involved the boats who placed 7th through 12th in the fleet racing.

With 6 teams involved each sailed 5 matches.

Teams aimed to be in the top 3 and advance.  Finishing the round on top was Germany skippered by Jochann Schumann multiple gold medallist.  They won 4 races and lost only to Denmark.  2nd was Sweden which was also 4-1 with the loss to Germany.  The third team to advance was Denmark with 1992 Gold Medallist Jesper Bank at the tiller.  Their losses were to Great Britain, and Sweden.

Failing to advance were France (2-3) and Great Britain and Ukraine (1-4).

Next up for Germany, Sweden and Denmark is a the 4th through 6th place boats, USA, Russia and Australia.

This round robin will have 4 Olympic medallists as skippers.  This means at least one won't win another medal.

Tornado Catamarans

Course: C

With the Austrian team having clinched Gold, the Tornado catamarans had 2 races left to decide the rest of the finishing order.

They sailed a single race on one of the inside the harbor courses.

Winner of race 10 of 11 was Germany.  Coupled with France's 6th this moved Germany to 3rd and France to 4th.  

Australia finished 2nd, thereby clinching the silver medal.

New Zealand was 3rd, and are still 9 points from bronze medal position.

The USA's team suffered a DSQ and is 8th in the standings with one race to go.