| Tied For First With Paige Railey | | Print | |
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Miami, Florida There were more light and variable conditions reminiscent of Qingdao today on Biscayne Bay for the third day of competition at US Sailing’s 2008 Rolex Olympic Classes Regatta. My contest with Paige Railey, my fellow American on the US Sailing Team, has tightened after I won the first race of the day and she was third. With three more days to sail, this is increasingly looking like an all-American contest. Penny Clark from Great Britain is in third place with 25 points as she and three other British sailors fight for selection in the first of a three-regatta series to decide their country’s Radial representative in China. British sailor Charlotte Dobson, is in fifth place, just seven points behind Penny, after second and third place finishes today. There was a very tentative southwest gradient wind this morning that eventually gave way to a light seabreeze from the southeast. After a postponement waiting for the breeze to steady we got away in about 6-7 knots of air. I had a decent start and sailed a clear lane out to the left hand side and rounded the windward mark in third place before moving up to second on the reach. On the run, Paige, who was behind me, went down the middle of the fleet while I went around the outside. We split the gates at the bottom and she followed Charlotte who was leading. When we came back together before the windward mark I was ahead and led from there to the finish. The breeze was faltering and down to 3-5 knots for the second race. We started again very quickly and it was tough to get my focus back. I had some stomach cramps caused by being hunched over all the time in the light air. It took a while to get back into it. I didn’t quite stick to my game plan and was deep at the top mark, around 17th place. However I started pulling back boats on the run to be tenth at the bottom mark, only to be passed upwind by six boats I had just overtaken. I passed four of them before the finish but I was bummed with my 12th place, although it could have been a lot worse. 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,
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Team Member
