49er Focus at Qingdao - Day Two Report

by Andy Rice 10 Aug 2008 16:40 BST 9-21 August 2008

Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes get off to a dream start

Exmouth lads Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes are not ones to show their nerves, but there's no doubt they were relieved to get day one of the Olympics out the way without getting in trouble. Not just that, but actually leading the regatta with solid scores of 4,3,5, while all their major rivals suffered at least one bad one.

The racing took place on Course A, right off the edge of the Olympic Marina in Qingdao, and the breeze was sufficient in the first two races for a bit of twin-stringing. It was paying - more often than not - to tack in towards the shore, so boats at times were little more than 20 metres from the breakwater.

The Brits always looked in good shape during the first two races. They started well in the first and sailed towards the breakwater before tacking. Left paid and they were second around the top mark. Losing two places was disappointing, but no disaster.

The Spanish reigning Olympic Champions on the other hand sailed a blinder of a first race, climbing from 4th through to 1st place. But they had a torrid day after that, knocking in scores of 10,17 to end up in 8th overall. The Aussies won the 2nd race, but had stuffed up their 1st race after hitting the windward mark and taking a penalty turn. The Ukrainians, who won silver in Athens, only broke into the top 10 once.

It wasn't all plain sailing for Team Exmouth either. They had a shocker of a start in the final race, with just three or four knots of wind and a current that was in danger of sweeping people over the line at the start. With the 1 knot tide in mind, Morrison was conservative to the point of starting in bad air, while other teams like USA drifted nicely off the line towards the shore, leading the fleet.

However, starting positions bore little resemblance to rounding positions at the first mark. The wind - what little there was - was all over the place. Team GBR rounded in the top 8, and chipped away throughout the race to come in 5th. A steady and assured start for the team that won gold in Qingdao at the Test Regatta 12 months ago.

49er Results: (3 races, no discard)

Pos	Nat	Helm	Crew	R1	R2	R3	Pts
1	GBR	Stephen Morrison	Ben Rhodes	4	3	5	12
2	ITA	Pietro Sibello	Gianfranco Sibello	3	9	1	13
3	DEN	Jonas Warrer	Martin Kirketerp Ibsen	2	4	10	16
4	FRA	Emmanuel Dyen	Yann Rocherieux	7	8	4	19
5	AUS	Nathan Outteridge	Ben Austin	15	1	7	23
6	BRA	Andre Fonseca	Rodrigo Duarte	10	5	8	23
7	AUT	Nico Delle - Karth	Nikolaus Resch	9	2	14	25
8	ESP	Iker Martinez de Lizarduy	Xabier Fernandez Gaztañaga	1	10	17	28
9	JPN	Akira Ishibashi	Yukio Makino	8	17	3	28
10	POR	Jorge Lima	Francisco Andrade	12	7	9	28
11	UKR	Rodion Luka	George Leonchuk	6	11	12	29
12	GER	Jan-Peter Peckolt	Hannes Peckolt	16	6	11	33
13	USA	Tim Wadlow	Christopher Rast	5	14	15	34
14	SWE	Jonas Lindberg	Kalle Torlén	17	18	2	37
15	CAN	Gordon Cook	Ben Remocker	13	12	13	38
16	POL	Marcin Czajkowski	Krzysztof Kierkowski	19	15	6	40
17	NOR	Christopher Gundersen	Frode Bovim	11	13	18	42
18	CRO	Pavle Kostov	Petar Cupac	14	16	16	46
19	CHN	Fei Li	Xianqiang Hu	18	19	19	56

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