It would be tempting to apply the old cliché of ’snakes and ladders’ to the first day of the Olympic Regatta, because that is what it was.
I sat at the leeward gate of Course A, just a few hundred metres off the sea wall of the Olympic Harbour, and every time the Finn or the Yngling fleet came downwind the pecking order bore little relation to the previous time we saw them.
Watching the Finns trickle downwind in breeze of just 4-5kt in the first race was painful viewing, let alone what it must have been like to be sailing in it. Although the air temperature was 27 Celsius, the 83% humidity made it feel at least 10 degrees hotter.
The tide was running upwind at about 2kt, so the Finns were barely making way towards the leeward gate. It seemed like all 26 boats would arrive at the marks together, and indeed it wasn’t far off that. Somehow Ben Ainslie managed to edge his way around the left-hand mark just ahead of France’s Guillaume Florent, and once around, the current sluiced the reigning Olympic Champion up the course at (relatively) great speed.
Meanwhile the main bunch was battling to squeeze around the marks with very little air to work with. This had played into the hands of the Greek sailor Emilios Papathanasiou, who had rounded the first windward mark in 25th place, second from the back. Around the leeward gate he was 4th, a measure of just how important these leeward gates are.
With Ainslie leading upwind, it seemed like maybe he had broken his bad habit of having an atrocious start to his Olympic Regattas. He has always started badly in the past three Games, and has bounced back in convincing style to win his clutch of two golds and a silver. This time it looked like he might get it right from day one.
But as we watched the fleet ghost its way down the second run towards the finish, it became apparent that Ainslie was deep in the pack again. Papathanasiou had sailed a blinder, the man who was second last now crossing the line in first place. Ainslie could only manage 10th, not a disaster, but a poor return from a race which he had led for over half the distance.
In the Yngling race, like the Finns, the rounding positions at the leeward gate bore little resemblance to the final positions across the finish line. This was good news for the Brits, who rose from 11th at the final mark to second by the finish. The USA team on the other hand had been 2nd at the leeward gate, and a lap later were second last, 14th place.
The Aussie team sailed a consistent race, climbing up from 7th at the first mark to move through to 1st by the finish.
In the second race the tide was even stronger, and a number of Finns got too close to the start line too soon. Biggest casualty was Emilios Papathanasiou who seemed to pop his lifting rudder off the back of his boat after catching the anchor chain of the pin-end start vessel. Italian Giorgio Poggi was first round the first mark, but by the leeward gate Ainslie had snatched a small lead, again just breaking away from the area before it became fully congested.
The question was, could Ainslie hang on this time for the win? Yes he could. Where in the first race he was caught by a 20-degree shift and a big hole in the breeze, this time the breeze actually built to 8 knots and he sailed home to a 12 second win ahead of Poland’s Rafael Szukiel. The Polish sailor currently leads the Finns, with Zach Railey from the USA in second, followed by Ainslie.
In the second Yngling race, the Dutch team led by 16 second around the first mark and stretched away throughout the race. At one point they led by almost two minutes and although the lead dropped on the final run to the finish, they still beat the second-placed USA team by more than a minute. As in the first race, the British team skippered by Sarah Ayton had a great climb in the latter stages of the race, moving up from 9th to 3rd on the final beat. Holding on to a 3rd place and adding the 2nd from race one puts them at the top of the leaderboard, ahead of the Canadian and Dutch teams.
It was a tense first day, and it’s going to require nerves of steel to get a medal out of Qingdao. Not the most thrilling racing to watch, but nailbiting stuff nevertheless.
