Wednesday, September 27, 2000
News Online

Regatta runs out of puff

No wind on Sydney Harbour today left Great Britain’s sailing medal hopes on tenterhooks for another day at the Olympic regatta at Rushcutter’s Bay with all racing cancelled.

The regatta organisers have now extended the programme for racing for all fleets until Saturday. This means that all the remaining medals should be decided over a full 11-race series with each sailor’s worst two finishes discarded from their score.

Britain goes into these critical last three days still with medal hopes in five classes in addition to the silver already won by Ian Barker and Simon Hiscocks in 49ers. The outside hopes are Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield who are in fourth place with just one race to come in men’s 470s, and Ian Walker and Mark Covell who are also fourth in the Star class with five races to come.

The strongest prospects remain Ben Ainslie in Lasers with a 14-point lead with four races to sail, Shirley Robertson in Europes who is second with three heats left, and Iain Percy who is leading the Finn fleet by five points with five more races still to sail.

In the Soling class, Roy Heiner of Holland succeeded in overturning a decision by the race committee which elminated him from the quarter-finals of the match-racing after he tied with the New Zealand crew led by Rod Davis. The international jury has decided that Heiner and Davis should now go head-to-head in a sudden death one race sail-off to determine which of them should go through to the semi-finals. Already through are the Norwegian, German and Danish crews.

EDWARD GORMAN
Sailing Correspondent
The Times