The gybe of the century? When Dylan Fletcher and Stuart Bithell rolled into the finish of the 49er Medal Race on port there was no way they would ever find a way to get to the finish line before their German rivals who were barrelling in on starboard and converging rapidly. As it was the German sailors left just enough of a gap at the right-hand end of the line for the Brits to gybe in time to avoid a penalty… but surely never with a chance of getting back up to pace fast enough to beat a German crew at full speed? Well, miracles do happen but usually you have to make them happen… Bithell somehow managed to get the chute filling on the new side, it seemed before his helmsman had turned the boat very much at all, Fletcher pointed the bow down the second the boat started accelerating and they crossed the line just a few inches in front of their rivals to collect a gold medal – one that everyone bar their parents had probably expected to be going to New Zealand courtesy of the ‘unstoppable’ Burling and Tuke. Take that, you colonial upstarts…
Gimson and Anna Burnet (GBR) who won silver, backed up by some heavyweight support including triple Olympic medallist Iain Percy keeping them on the straight and narrow. Two years after he recovered from surgery for a life-threatening brain haemorrhage, Paul Kohlhoff and his crew Alica Stuhlemmer took bronze for Germany. There wasn’t much to engage us in the Medal Race, it pretty much ran to plan, apart from when the Australians pulled a pretty good pre-start match racing move on the Germans in a last-ditch attempt to break into the medals. However ho-hum the Medal Race may
have been, through the week the best images from the regatta came from the Nacra 17s. Every gybe in medium to strong wind is unpredictable, they’re such difficult beasts to keep under control. That lack of control creates an ever-present sense of jeopardy that makes the Nacras the visually most exciting event to watch. But the injury count in the foiling cata-
maran remains high – I dread to think what it might have been like if the wind and waves had really kicked in. It’s a thin line between entertainment and danger of injury to the sailors; sometimes the Nacra really does feel as if it’s a bit too much like sending gladiators into the Colosseum. 470 Men Just like Matt Wearn in the Laser, Australia’s other sailing gold medal
60 SEAHORSE
was wrapped up before the Medal Race. But Mat Belcher and Will Ryan sailed a great victory lap. At the start they did the honourable thing and sailed on port tack behind the fleet so as not to upset the con- tenders for the minor medals. Even so the Australians pulled their way through to the front and confirmed the fact that they are a cut above the competition, winning the Medal Race and rounding off their stellar career in the classiest way possible. Anton Dahlberg and Fredrik Bergstrom (SWE) took silver and Jordi Xammar and Nico Rodríguez (ESP) bronze; the three best teams of the past four years were rightly rewarded with their place on the podium. Asked what makes Mat Belcher so
good, Dahlberg told me: ‘I don’t want to be rude, but sometimes it feels like Mat’s on the lucky side. But after I have seen this happen too many times I actually realise that there are some skills involved in being so lucky…’ Nicely put, Anton, and that sums up Belcher’s superiority pretty nicely. It will be interesting to see where the eight-time world champion and three-time medallist goes next with his sailing career. Visually I find the 470s a bit tough to
watch. They used to glide gracefully through the water, but not in the modern era. I don’t like the rig bouncing that the crews have been doing in the 470 over the
past few years. I think it looks silly and ungainly, but Will Ryan absolutely put me straight on this when I asked him about it in the press conference afterwards. ‘I prob- ably wouldn’t have stayed in the class if we hadn’t had the kinetics. It just requires so much from you as a person. ‘Not just physically, but mentally. It
requires massive teamwork. It’s really changed the way you sail the boat, and the time you spend working together. And it’s pushed up the level of professionalism that’s required to be good at the sport. ‘I admire the windsurfers for their athleticism. And I hope that people look at us, too, and think that we’re not old, fat, round people who drink beer at the pub, that we are out there working hard every day to be as good as we can. I hope the sport continues to evolve so that we can keep doing cooler and cooler things.’ I’m still not sure I completely agree with Ryan, but there’s no doubt that he and the other 470 crews have become among the very fittest of all the sailors in the Olympic scene. 470 Women The Medal Race should
have been a walk in the park for Hannah Mills and Eilidh McIntyre (GBR). Having sailed a solid qualifying series the British duo carried a 14-point advantage into the Medal Race ahead of closest rivals Camille Lecointre and Aloïse Retornaz (FRA).
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