Sydney 2000 - Olympic Sailing Day Ten

by Nigel Cherrie 26 Sep 2000 08:28 BST

SAILING MEMBERS OF TEAM GB MAINTAIN MEDAL ZONE POSITIONS AS MOST CLASSES PAST MIDWAY

With four days to go until the end of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Yachting Regatta, the seven remaining sailing members of Team GB are all poised for some world class racing as the five Olympic championships that have yet to be decided begin to take shape.

In the men's 470 class, Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield's last race push tomorrow for a medal took a turn for the better yesterday evening after the Ukrainian reigning Olympic champions Evhen Braslavets and Igor Matvienko were disqualified from series race 10 after a port and starboard protest led by the Portuguese crew. Rogers and Glanfield are now just four points off the Bronze medal with one race left to decide if they will become the second sailing members of Team GB to earn a place on the Olympic podium.

Ben Ainslie sailed away from a very difficult race on course area C today with his lead in the Laser class intact. Ben now has a fourteen-point cushion to assist him in the final four races but has by no means an unassailable lead. "I'm just going to keep open minded over the next few days as anything can and usually does happen in Sydney Harbour and with the second discard the points will close up and things could change dramatically," said Ben.

The forty plus Laser fleet only sailed one race in a shifty 5-12 knot breeze. Of all the leading names, Ainslie's eleventh was one of the most countable scores. "Overall, the best aspect of the day was that some of the others had really bad ones. An eleventh wasn't so bad considering what happened to me during the race and how some of the others finished," commented Ben.

After one start was abandoned half way up the first beat, Ainslie made the best of the second start but was unable to get completely in sync with the windshifts and was buried deep in the pack (in the mid twenties) by the first windward mark. He stormed through the fleet on the first downwind leg to tenth but an incident at the leeward mark with the Dutch Antilles representative once again left him to grind his way through the fleet, crossing the line eleventh. Meanwhile, Scheidt finished twenty first while Australian world championship silver medallist Michael Blackburn was twenty third.

After finishing fifth in series race five, Iain Percy was on target for a second place in race six and the lowest cumulative score of the day in the Finn fleet when the breeze died just short of the finish line and left him languishing in eighth place. "It was a shame that the race was turned inside out as it was looking good a couple of hundred yards from the line but at least the overall picture is still okay," remarked Iain.

Despite his six point set back, Percy still controls the Finn fleet by five points from multiple world champion Frederik Loof (Sweden)

Mark Covell's post race comments summoned up the meteoric fight back that he and helmsman Ian Walker put up in races five and six of the Star class competition on offshore course E in a fifteen knot South Easterly breeze and heavy swell. "We didn't do well on the shifts on the beats so we always had our work cut out but we never gave up and were rewarded for our efforts". The true extent of their comeback can only be appreciated with their mark rounding numbers; (race one): 12,11,12,11,6,2 (finish) while race two read 10,10,8,5,3,3 (finish). Walker and Covell are now fourth overall, just two points off second, which is held by Colin Beashel and David Giles (Australia). Defending champion Torben Grael (Brazil) continues to lead.

Shirley Robertson has slipped to second overall as Serena Amato (Argentina) takes over the Europe class lead by one point but with three races left everything is still to play for in the women's single-handed discipline.

Finn: (after 6 races, 1 discard)

Pos	Nation	Helm	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	Pts
1	GBR	Iain Percy	2	1	-9	2	5	8	18
2	SWE	Fredrik Loof	-17	5	1	6	7	4	23
3	POL	Mateusz Kusznierewicz	1	4	11	8	-15	3	27
4	FRA	Xavier Rohart	-11	11	4	3	1	9	28
5	ITA	Luca Devoti	-19	2	2	18	4	2	28
6	USA	Russ Silvestri	3	-18	6	11	2	16	38

Laser: (after 7 races, 1 discard)

Pos	Nation	Helm	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	R7	Pts
1	GBR	Ben Ainslie	-23	1	1	3	4	4	11	24
2	BRA	Robert Scheidt	1	2	-23	1	12	1	21	38
3	POR	Gutsavo Lima	6	-22	4	2	3	18	12	45
4	AUS	Michael Blackburn	8	8	2	-18	6	5	-23	47
5	AUT	Andreas Geritzer	2	11	-39	9	11	7	16	56
6	RSA	Gareth Blanckenberg	2	11	-39	9	11	7	16	56

Europe: (after 8 races, 1 discard)

Pos	Nation	Helm	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	R7	R8	Pts
1	ARG	Serena Amato	6	-15	9	5	2	2	6	1	31
2	GBR	Shirley Robertson	4	3	1	6	1	-13	8	9	32
3	ESP	Neus Garriga	10	2	11	13	5	1	-17	3	45
4	DEN	Kristine Roug	5	21	2	1	10	6	4	-28	49
5	NED	Margriet Matthysse	1	-24	19	2	6	5	3	19	55
6	BEL	Min Dezillie	8	8	-26	10	4	4	10	12	56

Star: (after 6 races, 1 discard)

Pos	Nation	Helm	Crew	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	Pts
1	BRA	Torben Grael	Marcelo Ferreira	3	-13	1	2	1	6	13
2	AUS	Colin Beashel	David Giles	-8	8	6	1	3	2	20
3	BER	Lee White	Peter Bromby	4	-10	3	8	4	1	20
4	GBR	Ian Walker	Mark Covell	1	9	-11	7	2	3	22
5	ESP	Jose Maria van der Ploeg	Rafael Trujillo	2	4	-17	3	11	7	27
6	NED	Mark Neeleman	Jos Schrier	5	7	7	-11	8	4	31