Hi all.
Our campaign is over and unfortunately we bombed it. After a great start, and being in the medals earlier in the regatta the race committee put on 3 races yesterday because light winds the day before only allowed 1 race. We ended up with a 3rd, a 6th and 9th. Our main competition did better, and we were pushed back to 6th overall 7 points behind silver and 6 points behind bronze. Our only hope was one more scheduled race today, but it was cancelled due to lack of winds. It Was heart breaking to see the ceremony today knowing we had been in a podium position, only to blow it on the last day.
Our only consolation was that the Brits, who protested us on a technicality after an incident on day 2 , which we felt was totally unfare and giving us a disqualification, also bombed out. They were also in medal contention, and we're penalized after illegally lifting there boat out of the water and cleaning the keel, after faking that they needed to carry out repairs they were penalised and we're put back to 5th place by the international jury. They are furious, and have had 4 attempts to redress the protest, all denied, and they are now threatening legal action by international arbitration. This has been really ugly. The Brits have been in the protest room either protesting sailors or the race committee throughout the series and everyone is sick of them. These guys get paid to sail, they are all on good money funded by th UK lottery system, so there were big expectations for them to get a medal. Had the Brits not protested us, we would have been in Bronze at the end, so you can understand our feelings towards them.
We also beat team USA who were ahead of us early in th regatta. The final winners were Holland , Germany and Norway.
We don't really have any excuses for not doing well, apart from we seemed to be on the wrong side of wind shifts on too many occasions yesterday. Our boat speed was always good, but these teams are very close and i now realise you have to be a meteorologist to do well.
It's not all bad for the AST though, Dan and Leisl got gold in the Skud class, beating arch rivals, the Brits. There will be a story on te ABC news tonight ( Friday Night) for those interested.
Jon.