Over-optimised?

If the Stars and Tornados had raced in the first part of the regatta, and experienced the same really light winds as the Yngling and Finn classes, perhaps it would have been a different outcome for some sailors, not least John Lovell and Charlie Ogletree with their Code Zero gennaker. This has proved to be a lame duck, with the sail proving much less versatile than they had hoped. The USA Tornado finished the regatta in last place overall.

Their team mates in the Star haven't fared much better. John Dane III and Austin Sperry developed a hull shape that was short on waterline and generally low wetted surface area. Collaborating with their German training partners, Dane was planning on a light wind regatta, and he was leading after the first three races, with scores of 8,2,4. However once the breeze got over 8 knots the more traditional hullshapes proved the better bet, and the Americans strung together a series of scores at the back of the fleet. Just days before the regatta, the Germans Marc Pickel and Ingo Borkowski ditched their experimental hull for a more standard Lillia and at least made the Medal Race, even if their shot at a medal remains distant.

The money that people have spent on Stars - which in some cases have gone no faster -doesn't bear thinking about. It's not what the Olympics should be about.

Tornado Swan Song

A bit like the Stars, there is a potential four-way fight for gold, although for the German team it is a 16 point gap to the leaders, so it's unlikely for them. The Spanish and Australians have been duelling all week, and still top the leaderboard with 36 and 39 points respectively. But Argentineans Santiago Lange and Carlos Espinola are only five points behind Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby, so the points are all close enough that we are unlikely to see any match racing moves. It should be a straight race.

Bundock and Ashby

It's hard to predict the outcome, but one thing we do know - there will be a new Olympic Champion. The gold medallists from the last two Games, the Austrians Roman Hagara and Hans Peter Steinacher, have not managed to find their customary light wind form. If ever there was a venue to suit their strengths, it should have been Qingdao, but it seems the rest of the world has caught them and even passed them. They only just scraped into the Medal Race - by a single point from the Belgian team.

Stars set for a showdown

The Stars are shaping up for a dramatic showdown in their Medal Race tomorrow. Freddie Loof and Anders Ekstrom might lead Iain Percy/Andrew Simpson by two points, but that effectively means the Swedes and Brits go in on an equal footing. Whoever beats who wins gold - provided that some certain other talented sailors don't intervene. The front two can't afford a straight match race because Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada sit 12 points behind the Brits, ready to capitalise on any mistake. A further four points back are Xavier Rohart and Pascal Rambeau of France. Any one of these four teams has a mathematical shot at gold.

All four teams have won the Star World Championships, and all four have won Olympic medals, although only the French got theirs in the Star, a bronze medal in Athens four years ago. Loof, Percy and Scheidt are all singlehanded medallists who have made a successful transition into the keelboat.

Two Great Medal Races

The RS-X Medal Races were real nailbiters today. They took place in the brightest, sunniest conditions we've seen in Qingdao. Not quite enough to get the boards planing though, so plenty of wind whacking going on.

Jian Yin sailed out of her skin, the Chinese sailor looking out of medal contention at one point, but working her back into third place by the finish, good enough to give her gold. Alessandra Sensini sailed a sensational run to get past Bryony Shaw and into the lead, while Shaw held off Yin across the finish line and took bronze - in the end quite comfortably - from Spain's Marina Alabau.

It was great to see the local people go crazy over the first gold in Qingdao. Sensini and Shaw looked almost as happy with their silver and bronze. This is the Italian's fourth medal, to add to her gold and two bronzes. She is the most prolific female medal winner. Others have won two golds, but Sensini's longevity is impressive in such a physically demanding class. "I've been doing this for 25 years," said the 38 year old, "and some girls in this fleet are less than 20 years old."

It wasn't such good news for the Brits in the RS-X Men, with Nick Dempsey letting a medal slip from his grasp in the dying stages of an extremely short race, a one-lapper which last just 19 minutes and 3 seconds. After starting too early, Israel's Shahar Zubari went back, restarted, sailed up the right, found some favourable breeze and rounded in 3rd place at the windward mark. He got past Tom Ashley (NZL) down the run and held 2nd place to the finish, behind Hong Kong's King Yin Chan.

Zubari's comeback earned him bronze by two points from Dempsey. Silver went to Julien Bontemps, and gold to Ashley - a much needed medal for New Zealand.

Danish 49er gold still under threat

The outcome of the 49er gold medal could yet be decided in Switzerland.

What???!!!

You might well ask.

Yesterday Italy and Spain put in a protest against the Jury for their decision to allow Denmark to keep the gold medal after racing in that windy Medal Race using Croatia's boat.

I spoke to head of the Jury David Tillett this morning, who said it had been fairly straightforward to reject the Italian/Spanish protest by referring to the addendum in the Sailing Instructions which relates specifically to the Medal Race. The relevant clause is Q5.3:

Q5.3 A boat may not request redress under rule 62.1(a). The protest committee
may decide to consider giving redress under that rule if it believes that an
error may have been made. The race committee may request the protest
committee to consider this.

So the Jury's original decision stands, and Denmark keeps the gold medal. But, there is word that the Spanish and Italian sailing federations may yet take this to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne. Speaking to an Italian journalist, the head of the Italian Olympic Committee is under massive pressure to produce medals from Qingdao, otherwise he loses his job.

These are the kind of political pressures that bubble away beneath the sporting veneer of the Olympic Games. As it stands, the Danish story is a great advertisement for our sport and for the Olympic spirit. If it gets dragged to Lausanne, the story will take on a much shabbier look. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Golden Goodison is no goody-goody

We've seen some ruthless dispatching of rivals by the British gold medallists this week. Ben Ainslie has become legendary for it, ever since he reduced Robert Scheidt to tears of frustration in that match race on Sydney Harbour.

He did it again to Zach Railey earlier this week. The Yngling girls match raced the Dutch team in the pre-start of their Medal Race, before sailing away to victory.

Today Paul Goodison won his gold medal from the back of the fleet, finishing in 9th place having pegged back his only threat - Sweden's Rasmus Myrgren - to 10th and last place. Having gone into the Medal Race in silver medal position, Myrgren came out with nothing. 6th place was no consolation.

It was a cruel, cruel ending for Sweden, who need every medal they can get. Goodison felt sorry for Myrgren, but not sorry for what he had done. "I feel sorry for him, but that's just sport. You have to do what you have to do." Having missed bronze by a single point in Athens four years ago, Goodison has personal experience of the pain Myrgren must be feeling tonight.

Asked by a national newspaper journalist if it was really necessary to have been so ruthless, Goodison shrugged: "If you don't understand about sailing it's a bit tricky, but I'm sure anyone who knows about sailing will understand." As to whether the Medal Race format should change to prevent such injustices? "It's not really for me to decide, it's down to ISAF, they introduced the Medal Race to try to solve that, but i don't think it's worked out quite as they wished."

I asked Myrgren how he felt about what had happened out there. You can hear the MP3 audio interview on SailJuice.com. He made a wry observation that if he had gone through to the final race carrying one more point from qualifying, Goodison would have left him alone, because the Brit would already secured gold. "I wish I had scored one point worse in the qualifying series, so Paul wouldn't have to attack me."

Myrgren was expecting Goodison to attack him the pre-start, and for a while he handled the onslaught. "I thought I had it in control 40 to 50 seconds before the start but then the wind died." Both the Brit and Swede started late, the rest of the fleet sailing off ahead. Job done for Goodison. So does Myrgren bear any resentment against Goodison? "Yes and no, I expected him to do it, and I think I might have done something similar."

I don't blame Goodison for doing what he did, but Myrgren was dealt an injustice. There is something wrong with the current format which encourages the leader to attack his nearest opponent and drive him down the leaderboard in a way that just doesn't square with natural justice. Iain Percy did the same to Freddy Loof in the Finn class in Sydney 2000, driving the Swede back to bronze while Luca Devoti snuck into the silver medal position. Ironically it's Loof who now leads the Star regatta this week with his old Finn rival Percy in 2nd overall. Will Loof be in a position to exact his revenge on Percy eight years later?

So my suggestion? Not fully thought through, but one to get the debate going.

Make all the sailors race the fleet, and not the rival. ie, have the International Jury watch for any repeated and persistent match racing moves against another sailor, and penalise an offending boat with a 720 penalty turn.

Yes, there would be a lot of grey areas here, about whether a boat tacked on another boat aggressively or for fleet positioning. But the sailors and Jury already deal in the greyest of grey areas with the policing of RR42 and illegal propulsion. I think it would be an interesting experiment to consider trying at Grade 1 or Grade 2 ISAF regattas in the next year.

What would your solution be to the Myrgren problem?

Rasmus Myrgren on the Laser Medal Race

Sweden's Rasmus Myrgren wished he had started the Medal Race with one less point from the qualifying series, and then Paul Goodison would have left him alone to fight for a silver or bronze. Instead, Myrgren suffered at the hands of the ruthless Goodison, and came away from the Olympics empty handed. Listen to him by clicking on the link below

http://sailjuice.squarespace.com/audio-mp3-files/Rasmus%20Myrgren.mp3

Landlocked Laser Legends

What do today's two Laser gold medallists - Paul Goodison and Anna Tunnicliffe - have in common, other than the obvious point that they sail the same type of boat with different sized sails? They were born less than 13 miles apart, in the centre of England, about as far from the sea as you can get. Britain's Goodison is a Rotherham lad, and the USA's Tunnicliffe was born in Doncaster. The other singlehanded dinghy gold medallist from Qingdao, Ben Ainslie, was born less than 50 miles away in Macclesfield. Even now, pushy Optimist parents are planning on relocating from the south coast to make sure their children grow up in the golden triangle in this landlocked part of northern England.