Photo: Dan Nerney/Rolex
January 29, 2008
January 29, 2008
I sailed well today and had fun on Biscayne Bay at US Sailing’s 2008 Rolex Olympic Classes Regatta. However my 2-3 finishes were not enough to hold back Paige Railey, my team mate on the US Sailing Team. Paige won both of today’s races to move into first place overall while I’m two points behind her in second place. Then there is a gap of 14 points to Penny Clark of Great Britain who is in third.
Yesterday’s northerly faded away this morning and there were some postponements until the sea breeze started to build in strength. Getting our first race started proved to be a bit of a problem. It took five attempts before we got away. I had a good start but got an attack of the slows in the early part of the beat and had to bail out of my position and rounded the top mark in tenth place. However I pulled back to third.
The second race I had a good midline start and led the fleet out to the right which was exactly want I wanted to do. At the weather mark I was in second place, behind Paige but then caught her on the run. At the leeward gates we split with Paige going left while I went right. At the top mark I was leading. By now we had pulled away from the following boats and were engaged in our own little match race. At the leeward mark Paige was ahead again and we made a tight rounding, one after the other. We continued match racing, going high and then getting back on course. I almost had her but ran out of race course and Paige got the gun.
It was a really good race with Paige and we both managed to smile and laugh about it afterwards. The relaxed atmosphere was nice, considering some of the intense tussles and battles we’ve had over the long months leading up to the Olympic selection trials.
We’re slated to sail three races tomorrow, weather permitting. Full results are available at 2008 Rolex OCR Radial Results.
I would like to thank my sponsors Carmeuse and K-Swiss for their continued support of my campaign for the Olympic Gold Medal in Beijing 2008.
Sail hard,
