Olympic Sailing is easy,if you can handle the heat
'Olympic racing is probably the easiest racing you get to do,' a 470 coach told me today. What?!! Yes, he said it, and meant it. I didn't get permission to use his name, but his point is still worth making, that even if you're a typical mid-fleet sailor you possibly stand your best chance of succeeding at the Olympics - more than any other major regatta - because some people just cannot cope with the pressure. Others thrive on it. If you're on the blessed ones, your mental strength might make up for your lack of talent, while other great sailors find that the unique pressures of the Games are just too much to bear.
'Ireland leads the fleet, Race 5, 470 Men and bangs the corners putting some noses out of joint'
Guy Nowell © Click Here to view large photo
People have wondered this very point about the Australian 470 team Nathan Wilmot and Malcolm Page, who woefully underperformed in Athens 2004, coming 12th in a regatta which many thought was theirs for the taking. They are doing a wonderful job of banishing those Greek demons in China, however, where they lead overall, looking very healthily ahead of the opposition, and the only team to have kept all scores inside the top 10.
Fellow Australian Tom Slingsby, the reigning world champion in the Laser, is having a nightmare by comparison. He scored 21st today, leaving him in 21st overall. The 23-year-old is virtually unstoppable in a breeze, but there has been very little of that in Qingdao, particularly today. Diego Romero on the other hand is sailing a blinder, currently leading the Lasers with 6,3,5. He is one of those mid-fleeters who is having a great regatta, who will be wondering if he can maintain that form. Others will be hoping that he is brought down by the 'curse of the yellow dot'.
British 470 helm Nick Rogers referred to the yellow dot today, the sticker that marks out the current leader of the series, and which sometimes leaves the sailor feeling like a marked man. Without saying it in so many words, Rogers was sort of hoping the Aussie 470 boys would start looking over their shoulder to protect their lead, rather than looking forward and continuing to attack.
It's easy for a siege mentality to set in when you're sitting on the lead, especially when things are as unpredictable as they are in Qingdao.
Course A - where the 470s were racing today - is the most unpredictable of all, being so close to the breakwater, but this is where the medals will be decided. As I wrote in my earlier Luck of the Oirish post, you can bang corners and win races to earn a bit of glory, but it's not going to win you a medal. Qingdao doesn't allow you to be conservative, nor does it allow you to be extreme. It requires you to take risks at the appropriate time, and to consolidate at other times, and very few have got a handle on when to do one or the other.
Snippets from Day 5 of the Olympic Regatta
Laser Radial
Anna Tunnicliffe (USA), leads with nice tidy scores of 4,5,6
Penny Clark (GBR) wins today, giving her scores of 2,22,1
Laser
Tom Slingsby (AUS), reigning world champion in 21st, scores of 21,22,21. Ouch!
Well done Andrew Campbell (USA), winning today's race, now 8th overall.
Diego Romeo (ITA) - who he? - is the surprise leader.
470 Men
Nathan Wilmot and Malcolm Page (AUS), fast downwind, leading nicely overall.
470 Women
Dutch and Australian teams absolutely neck and neck, tied on points and with an equal discard, with a big, big gap to 3rd.
49er
Aussies and Danes split by just a point, miles ahead of the pack. Aussies were expected to be up there but the Danes, Jonas Warrer and Martin Ibsen, sailing out of their skins.
Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes score OCS, making the prospect of a medal look more bleak, although subsequent scores of 3,2 leave them with glimmering hopes.
Best performance of the whole Olympic Regatta so far goes to Tim Wadlow and Chris Rast (USA), winning all three 49er races today, one by just 3 seconds.
Yngling
GBR girls put a couple more points between them and the 2nd placed Dutch, after another 'back from the dead' performance. Sarah Ayton and Co know how to haul themselves out of a hole. Like the 470 Women, the top two teams hold a commanding lead over the pack.
Finn
Ben Ainslie (GBR) edges ahead of Zach Railey (USA), with Guillaume Florent (FRA) still in 3rd. Who gets his 4th Rule 42 kinetics penalty of the regatta? You guessed it, Emilios Papathanasiou (GRE).
Luck o' the Irish: A report of race 5 in the Men's 470
Today's first 470 race has just finished. A lot of boats looked over at the start, the ones near the pin, and I thought it was a natural general recall. With the tide against them and the wind only 4 knots, you would have thought it was easy to stay behind the line, but this is a keen bunch.
Four boats were pinged, although I'm sure more were over. I wasn't the only one who reckoned the Chinese boat was most poked out of all, although I don't see any conspiracy theories here. The race committees here are international, and honest.
The big name casualties were the Israel and teenage Kiwi team. Still the Israeli crew Udi Gal is lucky to be here at all, after surviving a positive dope test. Seeing as the offending substance was Propecia, an anti-hair loss potion, Gal was given the benefit of the doubt.
Off the other end of the line, the Irish team Ger Owens and Philip Lawton made a beeline for the right hand side of the course. Not the 470 course, no half way into the neighbouring 49er course. Alright, I'm exaggerating, but they were so far off to the right the helicopter shot couldn't fit them into the same frame as the rest of the fleet. Right was the right way to go, as it turned out, and the Irish led from start to finish, albeit the Italians closed to just 6 seconds by the finish.
The Irish have won two races of five now, but still only lie in 9th overall. Says something about their tactical style. Bang a corner, and trust to the luck of the Oirish.
The Aussies had an average first beat, but turned on the afterburners on the downwind legs to take 3rd by the finish. That was a good result for consolidating their overall grip on the fleet.
The Brits were doing OK, rounding the final turning mark in 6th, right behind two others. With a big gap behind, they could have taken it easy on the final reach to the finish. Hardly any place changing happens here, but they got caught in a luffing match.
I wasn't close enough to see from the media centre, but I'm guessing their spinnaker touched the French boat because Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield took penalty turns, dropping three places to end up 9th. They are still 3rd overall, and I believe they may be protesting the French (lying 2nd overall) over that very incident. But those were 3 cheap points to give away. I hope it doesn't come back to haunt them.
Would it be any better in Weymouth?
Former Tornado Olympian Adam May will be out in Qingdao in a week or so, ready for some coaching at the Paralympics. He is in Weymouth at the moment, which is where the Olympic Regatta will be taking place exactly four years from now.
So how would the Olympic Regatta have been if it had been taking place this week, in the middle of the English summer? According to Adam, we would have had just one day's racing so far, because it's been blowing over 30 knots every day, not to mention the fact that it's been pissing with rain. Today it was gusting over 50!
So maybe we should thank Qingdao for small mercies. The sailing is not the most thrilling, but at least it's happening, and we can at least see the horizon - most of the time. Sarah Ayton told me the other day that this was about the fourth time she'd seen the horizon in three years of training in Qingdao.
Tim Wadlow, who by the way has just won the first two 49er races of the day for USA, said he never realised there was another chunk of the city across from the harbour until he came for the Olympic Regatta. We are talking little more than half a mile away, but such has been the fog, Tim said it was a revelation to discover the city was twice as big as he had originally thought!
So, thrilling it ain't, but the Olympic Regatta is running to schedule. And that is something few of us envisaged a week ago.
MP3 Interviews
I've done a number of new MP3 audio interviews, which you download from SailJuice.com
These include interviews with the 'three bullet' kings in the 49er from the USA, and Lobke Berkhout who is crewing the winning Dutch women's 470.
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by Andy Rice - SailJuice.com 
