Asia Olympic Sailing Wrap – Day 2

Manami Doi (JPN) competing on Day 1 in the Women’s One Person Dinghy (Laser Radial) event in The London 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition, Weymouth Bay. Photo 20120730 Copyright onEdition 2012©.

Six classes competed on the waters of Weymouth today in the 2012 London Olympics, and with good winds, the sailing was tight with a number of upsets and surprises.

Marine Scene Asia takes a look at the performances of Austral-Asia athletes.

FINN (Men’s One Person Dinghy (Heavy))
The leader, Dane Jonas Hoegh-Christensen, continued to sail well and followed up his 1,1 on the first day with a 2,7 on the second to lead the standings. His seventh place was after hitting the start boat, performing a penalty turn and recovering to pass half the fleet in a display of superb sailing.

Local boy Ben Ainslie scored 6,12 in a day to forget, and currently sits third overall.

Dan Slater (NZL) finished first in the the opening race of the day and sixth in the second race to pull him up the leaderboard. He now sits in seventh overall.

Brendan Casey (AUS) had an indifferent day with a 16 following a discretionary penalty being imposed (DPI), and went on to place 14th in the second race, leaving him in 15th overall.

China’s Lei Gong slipped down the leaderboard with a 24,21 today to place 23rd overall out of 24 participants.

ELLIOTT 6m (Women’s Match Racing)
The round-robin continued in the Women’s Match Racing today. The Australian team of Olivia Price (skipper), Nina Curtis and Lucinda Whitty contiued their winning ways beating both Finland and USA today to be tied at the top with Russia – both teams undefeated.

New Zealand (Stephanie Hazard (skipper), Jenna Hansen and Susannah Pyatt) came back from two losses yesterday to post two wins today and move up to fifth overall.

STAR (Men’s Keelboat)
A 3,2 from local favourites Iain Percy and Anrew Simpson (GBR) saw them move to the top tied on points with the team from Norway.

Hamish Pepper and Jim Turner of New Zealand won the first race of the day but slipped back in the second race to finish 13th and lay tenth overall with six more races to go.

49er (Men’s Skiff)
The 49er’s took to the water for their first races today. Austral-Asia is well represented with teams from Australia (Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen), Japan (Yukio Makino and Kenji Takahashi) and New Zealand (Peter Burling and Blair Tuke).

Pre-olympic favourites Outteridge and Jensen got off to a slow start with an eigth place finish in race one. The atmosphere created by the close proximity to the crowds of spectators saw them up their game in race two to score a win and lay third overall after day one.

The New Zealand team had to settle for mid-fleet finishes a 9,7, to place eighth out of 20 with eight races to go.

The Japanese team are 16th overall.

LASER (Men’s One Person Dinghy)
Forty Nine sailors lined up in the Laser (Men’s) class with the running rivalry renewed between Tom Slingsby (AUS) and local favourite Paul Goodison (GBR). It was Slingsby who got the better of the opening day with a 2,1 to sit top of the leaderboard. Goodison could only manage a 10,23 to languish in 17th overall, but there is still plent to play for.

Jeemin Ha from South Korea put in a solid performance with an 8,9 to finish sixth overall.

Andrew Murdoch from New Zealand finished 9th overall with Singaporean Colin Cheng falling back after a fourth in race one to finish 25th in race two and sit 15th overall.

Chinese sailor Jian Shi finished 33 overall and Malaysian sailor Mohd Afendy Khairulnizam and Thai sailor Keerati Bualong battled it out at the tail end of the fleet with the Malaysian sailor finishing 44th overall and Bualong 48th after the first day.

LASER RADIAL (Women’s One Person Dinghy)
Annalise Murphy (IRL) got off to a flying start with a perfect 1,1 score.

Australian Krystal Weir put in a consistent performance finishing 18th in both races, and sits 18th overall.

Sara Winther (NZL) placed 31,23; Elizabeth Yin placed 34,27 and Manami Doi (JPN) placed 29,32 to lay 27th, 31st and 32nd overall, respectively.

The Asian talk of the day was Chinese sailor Lijia Xu, who put in an excellent performance finishing fifth in race one and eigth in race two to be tied on points and sitting sixth overall.

Full results are available at http://www.sailing.org/olympics/london2012/results_centre.php.

See video of the sailing on the Official YouTube channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/olympic.