Defending women’s 470 sailing champions Polly Powrie and Jo Aleh today suffered the second disqualification of their Olympic campaign, severely denting their medal chances.
The two New Zealanders won their first race of the day, only to learn they had been disqualified for crossing the start line early.
They bounced back with a 3rd placing in their other race today, but are now in some trouble. Two disqualifications in one regatta is a stiff hurdle to overcome. They lie seventh on the overall standings with 42 points, well behind the British team that leads with 20 points.
Aleh said later that she and Powrie were initially pleased with their first race of the day.
"Then our coach Nath told us we were over. We knew we got a good start, one of those where who knows what it was, maybe a few centimetres," Aleh said. "There is not really much you can do about that – the race committee have the final say on these things.”
Aleh said that despite the way things had gone, she and Powrie had actually done a pretty good job so far."We’ve just had a couple of things that have swung the opposite way to what we’d like. We’ll just keep doing that for the rest of the races and see where it ends up.”
There are four races remaining.
There was better news in the nacra mixed, where Gemma Jones and Jason Saunders had placings of 13, 13 and 2. Going into the medal race, they are in fifth spot on 79 points, seven points behind the third-placed team. Argentina leads with 65 points.
Finn sailor Josh Junior fought hard in his two races, grabbing 4th and 6th placings to lift himself to seventh in the overall standings. He was eager to get into the top 10 and so make the medal race and achieved that goal.
Men’s 470 sailors Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox were 5th and 2nd today, probably their best day of the Olympics. They are now ninth overall with four races to go. They have 54 points. The runaway leaders Croatia have just 14 points.
"It was nice to have a few good results after a tough week,” Snow-Hansen said.
“Today was light conditions. We were out a long way offshore and the waves were a bit choppy, not much breeze. "We did a pretty good job of navigating the course and keeping the boat going and staying out of any big holes out there which was challenging.
“We’re pretty happy with the day.”
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