London 2012 day seven: Laser and Radial medal prospects firm up

Slingsby and Kontides to battle it out for Laser gold and silver as one points separates the top four Radials

Laser

In the Laser's first race on the Weymouth Bay West course, after one general recall the fleet was evenly divided up the first beat in the 16 knot SSWerly wind. At the first mark it was Spain's Javier Hernandez who led around with overall leader Tom Slingsby on his tail followed by Hungary's Zsombor Berecz and Urugary's Alejandro Foglia. Britain's Paul Goodison was holding 11th.

After the reaching led of the trapezoidal course and the subsequent run, Slingsby pulled into the lead at the leeward gate and from there never looked back with the Spaniard coming home second and Kiwi Andrew Murdoch pulling up to third with Goodison finishing 9th.

In the second race there was again a general recall but once underway the fleet all aimed at the left side with Slingsby getting bow forward to lead into the top mark ahead of Sweden's Rasmus Myrgren, Andrew Murdoch and Cypriot Pavlos Kontides with Paul Goodison fifth. On the run Goodison overhauled Kontides moving into fourth, but up the next beat the Cypriot regained his place with Brazil's Bruno Fontes also overtaking the injured Brit. While the positions remained the same for the frontrunners through to the finish, with Slingsby picking up his third consecutive bullet, two more sailors overhauled Goodison who finished eighth.

After bombing in Beijing, overall leader Tom Slingsby seems to be back on form and his bodes well for his expected match race with Pavlos Kontides on Monday's medal race. And the medal race is on the unpredictable Nothe course where conditions will be made all the more challenging by the forecast having racing starting light and the wind then building and veering into the west over the afternoon.

"The Nothe is the course where I had my worst result this week, so I know how hard it is," says Slingsby. "So I am not going to get complacent at all and if you get a bad start it is so hard to come back. I will look at the all the points and the scenarios and figure out what I have to do. I have to finish in the top seven in the race but I had a 15th last time [in Beijing] so I know how hard it is. I am going to concentrate on myself and we’ll see how the points work out."

After scoring a 15th in yesterday's first race, Slingsby then scored a bullet which he admits represented something of a turning point in his Olympic Games for him. "For me personally I just felt that the regatta wasn’t going my way. The race before I had a 15th and it felt like it was slipping a bit and when I went and won that race I was quite emotional – I felt like I had turned a corner and it showed that today. I was super confident today and I knew that I was going to be pretty hard to beat in those conditions."

Slingsby reckons the medal race will be a case of getting off the line. "If you are behind they are probably going to sit on you and cover you and not let you pass. I have had races where I have finished last in the medal race before - it can easily happen. I am going to really concentrate on making sure it doesn’t."

While Slingsby will be satisfied with nothing other than gold, Pavlos Kontides has nothing to lose. At worst he will end up with silver. But he is still gunning for gold too and the Nothe course, he hopes, will work in his favour. "It is very tricky and also a lot of times you need some luck so now a lot of pressure is off me and I know that the siliver medal is guaranteed so I can go there and do my game without worrying that is can be worse. It can only be the same or better.

"I think that Tom will probably match race me because he needs to be in the top seven or he needs to pull me out of the top three. For him to be sure to win gold he will try to keep really close to me. So I have to think about that and how he will react and some possible options about my strategy of sailing, how I will be able to escape and maybe turn the tables around and give him a penalty or something. That is the only way - to sail fast and try to put places between us."

For Britain's Paul Goodison his medal prospects are over.

"It is disappointing," he said. "There has been four years of hard work going into this campaign and I have had so much help from so many people and I feel like I have let them all down. I felt sure that the last three weeks coming into this that I had a really good chance of retaining my title. My speed was the best it has ever been in a breeze. My confidence was high and my knowledge of these sailing areas was, I think, better than anyone else’s in the fleet.

"It was pretty heartbreaking in race two when your back goes coming out of the start. I have tried putting a brave face on it, but after the second day it as pretty obvious to me that it was going to be hard to come out on top at the end fo the week. But it was a case of I still wanted to go out there and try my hardest but when you are only going along at 80% you are going to get schooled by the other guys.

"I think today the waves were a bit different so it made it a bit easier for me, even though it was windier it was less jerky, so I wasn’t in quite as much pain, but once you get halfway up the beat the power starts to go and it starts to hurt more and you just start to drop off.

"I thought I started both races really well and made the decisions really well for the first half of the beat but when you are a bit slower than everyone else they all catch you up and it is very difficult from then on.

Goodison is still on painkillers and undergoing furious treatment from the physios to keep him in action.

Will he do another Olympic campaign? "At the moment I just have to focus on the medal race and try to do the best I can in that. Then it is going to be a couple of months off to reflect on things - I have some big boat sailing lined up and then I need to make a decision about the next four years what I want to do about the next Olympic campaign.

"It doesn’t feel quite as horrific as Athens did four years ago because I feel like it has been taken away from me for a while. I really still feel that if I wa 100% I would be right up there."

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