Today's Sailing News 

 Olympic Sailing Day 8

Day 8 saw 6 fleets on the water.  3 of these were concluding their racing and awarding medals.

Weather: 

Day 9 could be the best day of sailing yet.  Forecasts call for NE sea breezes at 20 knots.

Women's Mistral: 

Course: B

The 11th and final race was a deciding race for this class.  Leading from the start and only briefly passed once, Italy's Allesandra Sensini won race 11 and with it the Gold Medal.  Germany's Ameile Lux who led for most of the regatta finished 2nd.  This left both sailors with 15 points.  The tiebreaker went in the Italians favor as she had 5 1st places to Lux's 3.

New Zealand's Barbara Kendall finished 3rd in the race and took home the bronze medal.

USA's Lanee Butler finishes out her Olympics with a 12th and ended up 4th overall.

For Italy this was its' first Sailing Gold medal since  Agostino Straulino and Niko Rhode won the Star keelboat class in Helsinki in 1952.  For Senisini it was her 2nd Olympic medal after a silver in 1996.

For Germany's Lux it was a silver medal in her first Olympics.

For New Zealand's Kendall it was a completion to a full set of Olympic medals.  She won Gold in 1992 and Silver in 1996.  

The Mistral women's medal winners dominated the regatta leaving no doubt who the best sailors were.

Mens 470 

The Men's 470 fleet is also sailing exactly on schedule.  They have now finished 8 races.

The first race today saw two boats from the bottom half of the fleet finish first and 2nd.  In fact Sweden in 10th place scored a 1st and a 4th to have the best day in the class.  

Australia won the 2nd race.  They stand in 1st place overall with 34 points.  Next is Portugal with 37 and the USA with 40.  The USA posted a 6th and 12th which was discarded from their score.  

With 3 races left the top boats must finish better to secure a medal.

Course: D

Mens Mistral

Course B

For this fleet it was a day of 2 races with medals still to be determined.

As with other fleets sailors from down the fleet sailed well.  

After 11 races and a final day of 5/7 Austria's Christoph Sheiber won his countries 2nd sailing gold.  He ended 5 points ahead of Argentina's Carlos Espinola who finished 11th (discarded) and 3rd on the final day.  Bronze medallist Aaron Mcintosh of New Zealand had the best day with a 3rd and a 4th.  

USA's Mike Gebhardt ended up 11th.

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 Today's Sailing News 

Day 9 will see the last races for the 49ers with silver and bronze on the line.  The 470's sail another 2 races, and the Finn's and Stars will sail races 3 & 4.

Soling Match Racing Round Robin 1

Course: A

Sailing near the Sydney Opera house the Soling's sailed a 2nd round of match racing.  6 teams sailed a 5 match round robin race.

Australia and the USA were each only able to win a single match.  Their 1-4 records were eliminated.

At the opposite end was Denmark skipperd by Jesper Bank which was 4-1 losing only to Sweden.  They advanced.

This left three teams with 3-2 records: Germany, Russia and Sweden.  

As Sweden losses were to Germany and Russia, they were the loser on the tiebreaker.

The three advancing teams will now sail against the top 3 teams from the fleet racing portion.  They are Norway, New Zealand and Netherlands.

From this 6 team group will come the 4 teams that will battle for the 3 medals.

Tornado Catamarans

Course: E

For their final Olympic race the Tornado's returned to the Pacific Ocean off Sydney.  To be decided was the bronze medal.

The race winner was the Australians who already owned the silver medal.  2nd was Spain with Great Britain 3rd and USA 4th.

The German team finishes 7th.  This was more than enough to gain them bronze medal position.

With this bronze medal Germany becomes one of two teams to have won multiple sailing medals.

Women's 470

Sailing within the harbor this fleet completed its 7th and 8th races on schedule.

A variety of boats did well.  With no dominant days the overall standings remain close.

Australia won the first race and now is the fleet leader with 39 points.  A point back is Ukraine which was 10th and 9th on the day.  Japan which finished the days final race 3rd has 43 points and is 3rd.

The USA team of Isler and Glaser finished 9th and 10th.  They are 6th, but only 5 points from 3rd.

The days other race was won by the 13th place Argentineans.