Silver for Rogers and Glanfield

by Lindsey Bell on 18 Aug 2008
Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield have won their second successive 470 men’s silver medal at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Regatta in Qingdao this morning.

Rogers and Glanfield, who started the day in fourth place overall five points behind the Dutch team of Sven and Kalle Coster in second and three behind Nicholas Charbonnier and Olivier Bausset (FRA) in third, finished ahead of both the Dutch and France in the double points medal race to match the silver they won at Athens 2004.

It has been a tough regatta for the Brits carrying some big scores and at times seeing what they thought were their chances of a medal fade away.

But in finishing today’s medal race third, with the French trailing in sixth and the Dutch seventh, Rogers and Glanfield leapfrogged their rivals to clinch a thrilling second behind Australian champions Nathan Wilmot and Malcolm Page, the Britons finishing on 75 points and both France in bronze medal position and Netherlands fourth on 78.

Speaking immediately after the race, Nick Rogers said:

'We are over-the-moon. We had a really hard start and to come through is so pleasing. That was the most intense race I’ve ever been involved in, I’m so pleased.

'It is probably more sweet than Athens because we were in with a chance of gold going into that race. Here we had to claw back a medal, this has been a pretty hard Olympics.'

Glanfield added: 'At one point we had really thought we’d lost it, three races ago it looked like we had no chance of a medal but the last three races have been so good and we’re delighted.'

It was Britain’s third sailing medal of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games following up Ben Ainslie (Finn) and Yngling trio Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson’s golds yesterday.

470 Men - Medal Race and final overall positions

1 AUS Nathan Wilmot, Malcolm Page 2 60 44pts
2 GBR Nick Rogers, Joe Glanfield 6 105 75pts
3 FRA Nicolas Charbonnier, Olivier Bausset 12 98 78pts

4 NED Sven Coster, Kalle Coster 14 93 78
5 ESP Onan Barreiros, Aaron Sarmiento 8 105 87
6 ITA Gabrio Zandona, Andrea Trani10 120 91
7 JPN Tetsuya Matsunaga, Taro Ueno 4 121 97
8 POR Ãlvaro Marinho, Miguel Nunes 20 132 102
9 CRO Sime Fantela, Igor Marenic 16 137 107
10 ARG Javier Conte, Juan de la Fuente 18 140 110