Olympic Logbook. Day five

All 2 weeks of the sailing Olympics itBoat maintains «logbook», telling about the main events and achievements of each day.

The crew of . Katja Skudina already on the fourth day of racing gained enough victories to reach the quarter-finals ahead of time. So yesterday our female racers felt free and relaxed, brilliantly defeating another competitor - this year's champion from Finland Silvia Lehtinen.. Although the fight was not easy - Skudina's crew won the start and for a long time was in the lead, but then Finnish yachtsmen managed to take the lead just before the finish. Our team was not confused and managed to change the situation immediately: taking the leeward position, she managed to steer the Finnish boat away from the finish line, then turned and finished first. Skudina's team did not have a second fly today.

Tomorrow is a day off in class, the remaining flyts with French and New Zealand racers will be held on Saturday, but there won't be anything interesting there anymore. At least until the quarter-finals on Tuesday, August 7. The Australian crew is still without defeats - 10 wins. However, it's too early to tell.

There's a saying on match races: «You have to lose sooner or later anyway, so it's better to do it at the very beginning».

Yesterday, the men's 470 class battles took place in Weymouth water (the first starts for girls in the 470 class will be held only today). Alas, the Sheremetev brothers got off to a bad start: 21st in the first race and 18th in the second. The lead after two races was taken by the British crew Luca Patins Stuart Bithell's crew finished 21st out of 27 competitors. However, there is still a chance to win back.

But in... Finne Eduard Skornyakov occupied the 16th place twice yesterday but yesterday he arrived at the 16th position in the overall standings.

On the other hand, the audience was happy about an aggressive battle of probably the strongest and most titled Finn. Ben Ainslie.. Since the start of the Olympics he has never managed to win on the home waters - his best result was the second coming. Today Ben managed to win the seventh race which was so important for him. However, it was not enough to get him to the first place in the overall standings: Ben is still second, three points behind Jonas Hoig-Christensen. Apparently, today will be the decisive day in the battle of these two "yakozuna" (for those who have the opportunity to watch the live broadcast, we remind you that the start of the races in this class today should be given at 15.00 and 16.30 Moscow time).

Lasers (both men and women) were resting today, so there couldn't have been any changes there. Unfortunately for Russian fans, there were no visible changes in the RS:X class. Dmytro Polishchuk, previously in 17th place, improved his position just slightly, moving up one line in the standings during the previous day. During one of yesterday's races he was close to success, rounding one of the marks in third place. Alas, he was unable to hold that position, finishing only sixth. Chances to get to the medal race are still small for Dmitry, but they are small: 12 points separate him from the tenth place, which is very difficult to recover in the remaining four races. In girls this class, Tatiana Baziuk yesterday also could rise to only one place from the last but one. Tomorrow is a day off in RS:X.

We haven't paid attention to the classes where our drivers aren't competing so far. The situation is as follows. Stellar British crew is in the lead. Ian Percyand a nine-point lead over its nearest pursuer, the Brazilian Robert Scheidt. Together with Fredric Loof (Sweden) they make the top three, breaking away from the other drivers by a massive margin. In 49er class for a long time the crew from Australia was above competition. Nathan Outeridge. (Australia) has been consistently unbeatable, but yesterday he made a number of mistakes, while Stephen Morrison (Great Britain) who was in second place, came in second twice to sharply close the gap in points.

You can watch broadcasts of the sailing races (although without commentary) on Sportbox, the schedule of all races and results on the ISAF website, and a daily report on the Russian national team performances on the VFSwebsite.