Olympic Logbook. The first days

All days of the sailing Olympics itBoat will keep a diary telling about the main events and achievements of each day.

What is the composition of the Russian national team at the XXX Games (XXX here is not the designation «porn», but a serial number), and what can we expect from it?

Our team can be divided into three parts. The first one is the athletes of the highest world level, not just capable, but almost directly obliged to take a medal.

The second - are very well prepared athletes who are able to compete with the world elite almost on an equal footing and can take a medal with a favorable set of circumstances. And, finally, the third are the athletes who are far inferior to the world stars of sailing, and on whose success (if truth be told) there is no reason to count on.

The Russian national team today has only one crew of the first level. Ekaterina Skudinacompeting in Women's Match Race on keelboats Elliott 6. This crew has been ranked fourth in ISAF almost all spring and half of summer. rating list ISAF in fourth place, which is saying a lot. The first six flys (six in total) were pretty successful: on the first day our girls had two victories over Swedes and Dutchwomen, the second day also brought two successes. This time the Danes gave up and the heroine of the regatta - Spaniard Tamara Aichegoin managed to defeat the first and second in two flys of the first day(Anne Tanncliffe and Lucy McGregor). But she could not get past our girls. Only two crews were undefeated at the end of the second day - Russian and Australian Olivia Price's team. They met in the second fleet of the third day.

Alas, the assertive and aggressive Australian was not enough for our girls. Either the tiredness of the first days or nerves let her down, but it was a fact: at the very start the Russian crew bumped into the Australian crew, received a penalty (360° turn) and were unable to win back by the end of the race. The Australian team leads the match race without a single defeat, while Skudina's team is second with one defeat. A good result, but let's remember that the round-robins have only reached the halfway point and Katya has yet to meet her toughest opponents.

Nevertheless, at present Katya's Skudina's crew is the only one that can really claim a medal. Again, everything is carried out by the fragile female shoulders!

A second level athlete in the team right now is Eduard Skornyakov, who competes in the Finn class. Here, too, we could count on a successful performance, but alas - after six races Eduard took only 16th place, 70 points behind the leader, Denmark's Jonas Hoig-Christensen (and getting to the medal race is almost impossible). On the other hand, there was a mini-sensation of sorts here as British star Ben Ainslie, whose victory on the home water was almost certain, was only third at the end of the second day and only with great difficulty managed to come second at the end of Tuesday, trailing the leader by 10 points.

«Tuesday at all turned out to be» a black day for the British sailing team.

On Tuesday British TV channels stopped broadcasting sailing competitions at all - the expected successes of their stars are not shown yet.

Although, to be honest, our other results so far are much worse. Only Dmytro Polishchuk is happy about RS:X class - he is 11th after two races so far.

However, the Olympic regatta hasn't even reached its equator yet - the final and medal races will be held only next week, beginning on Sunday. Well, read more details about the races in other classes later.

Live broadcasts of the sailing races (although without commentary) can be found on Sportbox, all race timetable and results on ISAF website, and daily reports on the Russian national team performances on the Russian Sailing Federationwebsite.