Percy and Simpson - robbed

As Freddie Loof and Max Salminen pick up Star gold at London 2012

Prior to Ben Ainslie’s historic fourth Finn gold medal there had been a shock in the Star medal race, when the team that had performed the best all week was denied gold.

While Ainslie was on the back foot for the opening half of his series before turning it around, so Britain’s Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson hadn’t flown away in the Star, but had consistently led from day two up against the Star's usual world class crop of pro-sailors, including multiple Olympic medallists, World Champions, America’s Cup and Volvo Ocean Race sailors. The Brits went into the Star medal race with an 8 point lead over Brazil’s Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada with Swedes Freddie Loof and Max Salminen a further four points back. In the double points scoring medal race, these three were far enough ahead of the chasing pack that they were all assured of the medals, but not their colour.

Loof and Salminen were fastest out of the blocks in front of the assembled spectators in their thousands lining the Nothe course. They tacked early and when the fleet regrouped on the left, further up the beat, the Swedes were in front. Meanwhile Percy and Simpson were holding sixth, but reassuringly were one place ahead of their nearest rivals overall, Scheidt and Prada.

The Swedes led around the top mark ahead of Kiwis Hamish Pepper and Jim Turner, with France’s Xavier Rohart and Pierre-Alexis Ponsot third with the Brits fifth, the Brazilians eighth. Up the second beat the Kiwis did well playing the mid-right to overhaul the Swedes at the second top mark rounding with the Brits still fifth, the Brazilians still eighth. Digging out to the left the Swedes regained the lead on the third beat and despite being down in sixth the Brits at this stage were still assured of gold with the Brazilians still in eighth.

But on the approach to the finish line the wind went soft, the boats regrouped and in yet another photo finish with the Brazilians on this occasion it was Scheidt and Prada who came out on top to finish seventh, but more vitally dropping Percy and Simpson down that one extra place that would leave the Swedish medal race winners, Loof and Salminen, two points clear overall to claim the gold. A similar situation that worked for the Brits when they won Star gold in Beijing worked against them on this occasion.

Percy recounted what happened: “10m from the finish or so, it was all so close. It got very light at the end and it was very up and down and puffy as it does when you race that close to shore. We don’t like racing in those conditions, but at the same time if you raced there over a week it is fine, but we just didn’t get it right today.”

As to their plan going into today, Percy said: “Obviously it was a little bit different from some medal races where there are three boats in it, especially such strong competitors that you can’t assume that any one won’t perform. For that reason we didn’t go with a plan of taking out either the Swedes or the Brazilians, it was a case of seeing how the race developed. You take the situation from where you were and we felt we were in a good enough position, that if we stayed in front of Robert and Bruno we would be able to get a top six result and we still felt that until 10 yards before the finish and it was about at that point that we realised we couldn’t.”

Andrew Simpson added: “It is pretty gutting for sure. We feel a little robbed, but it is our fault. We’ll take it on the chin. You are never 100% confident, that last run proved it. It was tricky and fair play to Sweden - they have had a great regatta. We are very frustrated for everyone who has been watching. But going past and getting the applause while we were hurting inside. The crowd today... that is going to be a highlight of my life.”

Percy admitted: “It was very very tough. We enter these competitions knowing we are going to have one medal race at the end and that it is going to be a dice throw. We chucked it wrong today and made the wrong decisions and Freddie made the right ones. I don’t think we should have spat him out off the start and forced him right. We should have let him roll us and get spat out the other way. That’s not normally what you’d do.

“We felt at the time that we had let everyone down, including the people on the Nothe and when they are giving that heartfelt cheer and support it makes you realise that they back you even if you do have a bad day. We have seen that all across the Olympics. They are proud of the effort and that is a special part of the British character.”

Understandably the medal race format, stadium sailing, as is now used in the America’s Cup and has been pioneered in circuits like the Extreme Sailing Series and Alpari World Match Racing Tour, came in for some criticism today. After four years of hard graft by all the teams involved, their sponsors, supporters, family and friends – is it right and fair that all this work going into determining who is the world’s best sailor in a particular class, culminates in a race that is somewhere between a ‘proper’ yacht race and a lottery?

Percy gave his take: “I personally have never been a fan [of the medal race] from the beginning. I think the aim of the sport of sailing should always be to average it out, because there is the wind nature, but then to put so much emphasis on the most random of the races...” But as he said earlier, this does work if it is over a series where there is the chances for the points to average out.

However Percy didn’t want to dwell on this subject and or to make it sound like sour grapes. “Let’s not concentrate on that. These guys [Loof and Salminen] are unbelievable competitors. I have been racing against Freddie for 20 years. He is one of the nicest guys in the fleet and one of the best sailors in the whole circuit and one of the small things that puts a smile on my face is that he is standing with the gold medal after 20 years of effort. They deserved it for today and they deserved it for the week – brilliant. We are gutted for sure, but we are also proud of our efforts this week. When the pain of losing goes away we will be proud of what we achieved.”

From here Percy is off to join Artemis Racing in the America’s Cup, and there is some irony to the fact that the Brits should be beaten by a Swedish team this week when the Artemis Racing campaign is also backed by a Swede in form of Torbjorn Tornqvist. Meanwhile Simpson will be staying closer to home with a new baby due in September.

As to future Olympic prospects for Britain’s Star double Olympic medallists, this is entirely dependent on the return of the men's Olympic keelboat, currently off the roster for Rio 2016. Robert Scheidt was in the best position to provide an update: “They are keeping us guessing a lot about this question. I was in touch with the Olympic Committee President in Brazil, Mr Nuzman. He is keen on putting some pressure on ISAF and with the help of the IOC perhaps we can turn it around. It isn’t guaranteed yet, I don’t know how much chance we have got, but I think with the show we put on this week, the final coming into the medal race, like four years ago with nothing decided until the finish line.... It is a great class and has a great atmosphere. The sailors are really good athletes and off the water there is a lot of respect. The class really deserves to be in Rio in 2016. Let’s hope. Nothing is for sure, but I think the politics game is never predictable.”

If it does return, the Star will be brought back (as it was before) as an additional event to the present roster of 10. According to Scheidt nothing is likely to be determined until the autumn at the earliest when a new ISAF President is ushered in.