Olympic Sailing – Yngling drama on Fushan Bay

by Rob Kothe on 17 Aug 2008 After eight days of marginal sailing days in the 2008 Beijing Olympic sailing regatta, the wind gods provided a day of drama on Fushan Bay.

Winds built all morning and by Yngling Medal race start time, there was driving rain, waves of one and half to two metres and the wind was a steady 22 knots.

In the Yngling prestart, the Russian boat helmed by Ekaterina Skudina holed the French boat, in a port start-board incident.

Off the start line Many Mulder and her Dutch crew, Anne Le Helley (Fra) and the British blondes were at the committee boat end.

At the top mark Ayton and her crew (GBR) was a second ahead of Ned, USA tried to squeeze in at the mark and stalled and the Dutch were held up. That was the boat race.

The British boat surfed away. At the bottom of the run they were four lengths ahead of the Greeks and a length ahead of Germany.

Behind them the French boat was taking water and it fell back through the fleet.

The race tightened at the top with Germans a length in the lead, but the Brits came back to record a narrow win from the German girls, the Greek trio were third then the Australians.

A shock for the Australian Yngling team, who believed they had finished fifth in the Olympic regatta. As they crossed the line, they disqualified from the medal race, as they had not weighed in today.

Weir, Gojnich and Farrell had weighed in yesterday prior to the start of the medal series, but Weir had failed to weigh in today and were disqualified because Class rules require all crew to weigh in on the day of the race. That smashed them back from 5th at the Olympics to 10th.

The French were given average points for the Medal race.