Saturday, August 20, 2016

Fantastic Rio

Must admit I didn't really get into the BBC's dedicated stream for the sailing until the medal race week so missed a lot from week one but what I saw was fantastic. Races with skill, drama, twists and turns and plenty of story to look back on:

  • Annalise Murphy winning a medal after just missing out in 2012
  • The Australians and Croatians battling it out in the pre-start and across the course in the Lasers
  • The Australians battling it out again, this time with the Greeks for the 470s
  • The Australians and Greeks in the 470s almost falling overboard as they trapezed out as far as they could
  • The Americans getting their first sailing medal for many years in the Finns
  • .... but agonisingly crashing out of the medals in the woman's 470s by taking the wrong side of the course on the last downwind leg
  • Plus of course two golds and a silver for Team GB (yay!)

I just about managed to see Hannah Mills & Saskia Clark get their gold medal as was streaming it to my phone while on train so big gaps but saw the celebratory sail to the beach to see friends and family (ah, bless).

But the best story of all was of course that of Argentina double handed Nacra 17 helmed by 54 year old Santiago Lange who'd battled lung cancer the previous year, was across the line early and had to take a penalty in an tense race. But he and Cecilia Carranza Saroli fought back and got the gold by a single point. Bravo! It was great to see him celebrate and watch his grown up kids (also competitors) swim out to greet him. 

There should be more sailing like this on the BBC!

What was your favourite memory?


2 comments:

my2fish said...

I, too, only watched a few of the medal races (TV issues, time of day, etc), but I did really enjoy watching Annalise Murphy in her race, and then Caleb Paine in the Finn class sailed an impressive medal race.

JP said...

I did rather enjoy the Finn class - but for another reason ;)