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

470 Women

In the 470 Women's opening race today it was France's Camille Lecointre and Mathilde Geron who made the best of the first beat, rounding the top mark just ahead of New Zealand's Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie and the USA's Amanda Clark and Sarah Lihan with Brits Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark seventh.

On the first run the US team and Aussie gold medallists Elise Rechichi and Belinda Stowell
overhauled the Kiwis. At the top of the final run Aleh and Powrie pulled back into third with Mills and Clark following them, leaving the US team fifth, positions which held to the line.

In race two it was tight at the top mark with Italy's Giulia Conti and Giovanna Micol squeezing around just ahead of the Brits with the consistent Kiwis in third. Mills and Clark were overhauled on the run by Brazil's Fernanda Oliveira and Ana Luiza Barbachan. The Brits suffered when the shackle holding on their bottom mainsheet block blew up. As a result they lost places on the second beat dropping them to seventh.

As the Italians and Brazilians extended away, after a reaching leg, the final run saw the Argentinians on a charge with both them and the Brazilians overhauling Conti and Micol. On the short reach to the line the Italians overhauled the Argentineans but we only able to pull back to second behind Brazil with Mills and Clarke sixth.

Of their small issue in race two Saskia Clark explained: "Our mainsheet shackle came undone, so our mainsheet block came off down the first run. We wasted quite a bit of time and distance trying to fix it but it wasn’t possible so we had to race the second half without it. Fortunately the thing was bent out so it wasn’t fixable, but you are obviously quite paniced and you can’t see it that well because there’s a spring in the way and you are trying to get a screwdriver in there. So I was trying and you obviously have a bit of adrenalin pumping around. We should ahve called it a bit earlier not to bother and just get on with it."

So how did they survive on the next upwind? Clark points to her pint-sized helm. "We’ve got guns on the mainsheet and tiller here!"

Mills added: "We definitely lost speed, because the main didn’t go out particularly well and you didn’t really have any feel, so we were definitely pretty slow up the beat. But we made sure we concentrated on making the right tactical decisions and not letting the speed affect us too much but we hung on in there and clawed back to sixth."

Despite this the Brits posted a most acceptible 4-6 today leaving them in second overall. "We are pretty happy," continued Mills, who admitted that their Olympic jitters had been worse today than they were yesterday (they don't like the late starts). "We have got speed. We are racing pretty well we just end to get off the start line a bit better. We are still well in the mix and tha is where we’d planned to be by the end of day two."

Aussie gold medallist Belinda Stowell was unhappy about being overtaken by the Kiwis on the reach to the finish line of the first race but was otherwise okay. "It was a really good race, we fought hard and that is something we are pretty happy with.

"We were really upping the fight in the second one and again we had something blow out on the spinnaker - one of the blocks blew out and for people who check everything that is really annoying. So it is just really disappointing that we lost three boats that rolled over the top of us and then we ended up back in the pack and that just set us back quite a bit.

"We are really happy. We are doing well in these conditions because we haven’t been able to fight like we are now. Realistically we could have been top seven in every race but those equipment issues cost us a, lot which was disappointing. We just have to be really diligent and re-focus for tomorrow."

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