In the fourth and as it turned out, our final race, we got off the line in a strong position. We held her out to the left side of the race course and led her into the top mark. Downwind, she surfed a puff/wave into leeward of us. She didn't have luffing rights so she tried to double-gybe to gain the right to pin us past the mark. As she gybed to port, however, we matched the gybe, and she gybed back too close to us and her kite smothered our sidestays and mast. She got a penalty for contact and then the umpires gave her a red penalty because they judged her as having gained an advantage by her illegal manoeuvre - she rounded the mark ahead of us.  (Red flag penalty - team has to spin immediately.) As she completed her penalty, she was just up on our hip heading to the right, which actually was quite a good place to be. She was very fast and got her own small winds to close the gap on us. We sailed out to layline, and were able to round the top mark ahead by one or two lengths. Downwind, we led the gybe and got the left shift that took us into the finishline ahead and so giving us the win and the series. (RUS left/USA right Closing The Shore And Leeward Mark : Photo: copyright Richard Langdon/OceanImages 2011)

We are very excited to be locked into a medal, and are looking forward to racing Team Macgregor, GBR, tomorrow in the Finals. Our racing starts at 2pm but as yet we are not sure on which course we will be racing.