One sailor who doesn't have to worry about whether she'll make it to Qingdao in August is the USA's Olympic representative in the Laser Radial class and US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics member Anna Tunnicliffe (Plantation, Fla.). After winning the U.S. Olympic Team Trials for Sailing in October, Tunnicliffe changed her focus. "I used to have one drive--to win the Trials.
Now I have a new drive; it's to win in China.
" The Florida sailor today won the second of her class's two races after finishing third in the first. The performance put her in first place overall for the day. "It was only 7-9 knots, which made for tricky sailing," said Tunnicliffe, acknowledging that China will have similar wind conditions but with much more chop and swell than Biscayne Bay had to offer today. "It's still early," she said about this regatta. "With it being light and fluky, it's still wide open."In second overall after today's racing was Paige Railey, another Floridian (Clearwater) whose name seems magnetically drawn to Tunnicliffe's whenever they enter the same events.
Railey swapped out with Tunnicliffe to win today's first race and then finished fourth in the second. After she finished behind Tunnicliffe in the Trials, she decided to go "back to the basics and have fun with sailing." She re-set her goals, both long-term (the 2012 Olympics) and short-term (the Laser Radial Worlds in New Zealand this March). "This regatta is part of my build-up to peak at the Worlds," said Railey. "It's too early to tell what will happen here. The fleet is completely stacked with good sailors."-http://www.regattanews.com/
