London Olympics 2012 – 470 Champions return to top

by Rob Kothe on 4 Aug 2012 London Olympics 2012 day 2 of competition for Mens 470 class.

Australia’s Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page have dominated the Mens 470 Class (dual mends dinghy) for the last 12 months and are strong favourites to win an Olympic Gold medal.

They have set very high standards for themselves. Yesterday they were angry for what they called 'a school boy error', a costly port starboard which meant they recorded a ninth. But today they bounced back with a 2,1 result.

Just out of the boat park they were both smiling.

Malcolm Page was relieved. 'Certainly we were back in our groove. Back in our style today. Our downwind speed was good so we were saving ourselves and fighting for the inches when it mattered.

‘Today it was nice to be fighting out in the front. It was really close with our British guys.

'I think we changed the lead a bunch of times throughout both races. In Aussie fashion and fighting spirit we fought hard and it is just nice to come away with good results.

'We are lucky to have Victor (Kovalenko), with us now you couldn’t ask for any more. He is the most experienced. He is the best coach in the world and he has proven that.'

Mat expanded on conversations. 'We have high expectations, maybe a little too high in the sense that we are overall fourth yesterday. We are pretty hard on ourselves and we expect a lot.

'It’s nice today that we have come out to prove that and we will go tomorrow and do the same.

'The Brits (Patience and Bithell) are going very well but we are not looking at point scores at the moment. We have just got to worry about ourselves. We are only four races in of 11. It is a long road ahead.

'’They are great sailors. They are great guys. Hey we can only sail our boat. We can’t sail their boat so we have just got to keep concentrating on ourselves at the start and worry about the wind shifts and then worry about the tacks and the gybes as the race builds. It is too early to start playing the points game.'

Results to date:

  

1	GBR	Luke Patience Stuart Bithell	2	1	4	2								9.0	9.0
2	AUS	Mathew Belcher Malcolm Page	3	9	2	1								15.0	15.0
3	AUT	Matthias Schmid Florian Reichsteaedter	1	4	7	19								31.0	31.0
4	SWE	Anton Dahlberg Sebastian Östling	4	6	8	14								32.0	32.0
5	POR	Álvaro Marinho Miguel Nunes	12	2	16	5								35.0	35.0
6	FRA	Pierre Leboucher Vincent Garos	9	10	11	6								36.0	36.0
7	NED	Sven Coster Kalle Coster	8	5	19	7								39.0	39.0
8	NZL	Paul Snow-Hansen Jason Saunders	28 DSQ	3	5	4								40.0	40.0
9	ITA	Gabrio Zandonã Pietro Zucchetti	6	26	1	8								41.0	41.0
10	ARG	Lucas Calabrese Juan de la Fuente	5	24	3	9								41.0	41.0
11	USA	Stuart Mcnay Graham Biehl	15	22	10	3								50.0	50.0
12	ESP	Onan Barreiros Aaron Sarmiento	7	8	12	27								54.0	54.0
13	GRE	Kampo Kampouridis Efstathios Papadopoulos	14	7	20	15								56.0	56.0
14	ISR	Gideon Kliger Eran Sela	17	11	17	11								56.0	56.0
15	GER	Ferdinand Gerz Patrick Follmann	13	17	13	16								59.0	59.0
16	CRO	Sime Fantela Igor Marenic	28 DSQ	13	9	10								60.0	60.0
17	RUS	Mikhail Sheremetyev Maxim Sheremetyev	21	18	14	13								66.0	66.0
18	CHN	Weidong Wang Daokun Deng	20	15	6	26								67.0	67.0
19	SUI	Yannick Brauchli Romuald Hausser	11	16	18	22								67.0	67.0
20	JPN	Ryunosuke Harada Yuugo Yoshida	19	12	25	12								68.0	68.0
21	KOR	Gunwoo Park SungMin CHO	23	14	15	24								76.0	76.0
22	TUR	Deniz Cinar Ates Cinar	10	23	26	18								77.0	77.0
23	FIN	Joonas Lindgren Niklas Lindgren	22	19	22	17								80.0	80.0
24	CAN	Luke Ramsay Michael Leigh	24	20	21	21								86.0	86.0
25	IRL	Ger Owens Scott Flanigan	16	25	24	25								90.0	90.0
26	RSA	Jim Asenathi Roger Hudson	18	27	27	20								92.0	92.0
27	CHI	Benjamin Grez Diego Gonzalez	25	21	23	23								92.0	92.0