Olympic Logbook. Day Seven

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

Saturday marked the end of the Round Robin of the Women's Match Race on keelboats trikes Elliott 6. Although from a formal point of view it did not change anything for us (the crew by Ekaterina Skudina Although it formally changed nothing for us (the crew won the right to participate in the quarterfinals ahead of time), it did answer to who will be the first competitor of our girls in the main part of the regatta. The first is if our yachtsmen manage to pass him and get into the semifinals.
Our crew had two flights today - against Frenchwoman Claire Leroy (fligh 60) and New Zealander Stephanie Hazard (fligh 65). The first flyteam developed quite dramatically: having lost the start to the Frenchwoman, Skudina put up a very tough fight to her rival on the first tack, but came out on the top mark of the second, only three seconds behind Leroy. She had only three seconds ahead of Leroy. After the turn she managed to break the Frenchwoman's spinnaker. Leroy was not confused and went to the leeward position forcing Katia to overtake the mark. Here Skudina made a mistake - being on the left tack, she didn't give way and was penalized under Rule 10. She was the first to pass the mark by four seconds.
The second tack did not bring our crew luck - the whole fight was on a full course again. Here began something extravagant: once again Ekaterina managed to overtake the Frenchwoman and tried to catch her at a foul. Both crews dropped their spinnakers and began to spin, trying to force each other into mistakes or provoke a collision. Skudina tried to close the finish line for Leroy, but the latter was faster and our crew still needed to curl a penalty turn. It was a shameful defeat by a 15 second margin, but our crew kept fighting hard and competently till the end.
«The second flyteam of our girls went». Katya, who had sat too long at the start, beat her rival at the first tack and finished first at the top tack. On the fordak, the New Zealanders tried to close the wind and thanks to this, they were able to take the lead for a while, but Ekaterina managed to stop them from overtaking first. The New Zealanders were 12 seconds late to the mark, and although they kept up the pace for the remainder of the course, they couldn't win back the gap completely.

After winning 8 of the 10 flyteams, our crew finished second and will compete in the quarter-finals against world number two Lucy MacGregor .

Not the weakest fencer, but she is also motivated «» . The quarter-finals in match race discipline will start on August 7, and the finals will take place on August 11.
In the other classes the following events took place: in men's 470 the leader was changed. The Austrian crew of Matthew Belscher won both races on Saturday and moved up to the first line of the table. As for the Sheremetev brothers, they had an uneven performance today - finishing fifth in race 5 and only 20th in race 6. The result - they're up from 17th to 16th place. They are still 25 points behind the top ten from yesterday. Laser class finished the main part of the regatta. Igor Lisovenko is 27th and leaves the regatta. Tom Slingsby won both last races and tops the standings with a 14-point lead over second place (Pavlos Kontides). A sharper intrigue has set in the women's Laser Radial: the day before yesterday's favourite Evie Van Acker has fallen back to fourth place, but that's not the case: two girls have 33 points each in the top four and two others have 34 points each. That foursome will draw a set of awards between them. Both medal races in Lasers will be held on Monday. Svetlana Shnitko climbed up to 34th place, but that's all.
In RS:X class there are no positive changes: Dmytro Polishchuk isstill on 16th place, but his gap to the first ten increased from 12 to 32 points. It's unreal to win them in the remaining two races, so Dmitry may leave the regatta too. On girls Tetyana Baziuk shows a stable 24th place. It should be noted the successful performance of Ukraine's Olga Maslivets: yesterday she managed to win one of the races, and in general she successfully holds the third position.
And now, a few words again about the Finn class where the final medal race will be held today. To be exact, what we should expect and what tactical steps can be made by three leaders. No doubt, the main intrigue will be the fight of two stars: Jonas Hoig-Christensen and Ben Ainslie. Specialists agree that we won't see «»match-race in Ainslie's usual style - most likely both will race each other, but in close proximity to each other. The Brit needs to come in ahead of the Dane, and then he's a four-time Olympic champion! Peter-JanPostma has a choice: either to defend his bronze position (for that he must be no more than two places behind Jonathan Lombert and Ivan Gaspik and no more than three behind Vasiliy Sbogar), or to take his chances and try to fight for the more expensive metal. Theoretically, he has all the chances to do so.

Who will win? An enraged Ainslie from recent events? The utterly cool and collected Hoig-Christensen? The secretive Postma, who has not said a word to reporters?

We'll find out after 5 p.m. today. But in any case this race will go down in sailing history.

The sailing race broadcasts (although without commentary) can be seen on Sportbox, the schedule of all races and results on the ISAF website, and a daily report on the performance of the Russian team on the VFS website.