Great Britain has won the Nations Championship of the Olympic sailing regattas twice in a row. The Australians, who have come on strong, have now overtaken the British in their home waters of all places. Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page won the third gold medal for Down Under on Friday, while the British have to be satisfied with one Olympic champion - "Big Ben" Ainslie. Small consolation for the Royal Yachting Association fleet: no other nation has won as many medals as them with one gold and four silver.
It was an almost perfect day for the 470 sailors Kathrin Kadelbach and Friederike Belcher. First they came third in the medal race (eighth overall), then Rike Belcher was finally able to embrace her husband on land and congratulate him on the greatest success of his career. New Zealand's Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie won gold in the women's race ahead of Great Britain's Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark. Bronze went to Lisa Westerhof and Lobke Berkhout from the Netherlands. Tears were shed by the Americans Amanda Clark and Sarah Lihan. Even the last US team in the race could neither prevent nor believe that their sailing team had gone without medals for the first time since 1936 (!) and were among the biggest losers of this regatta.
470 helmswoman Kathrin Kadelbach was pleased with the outcome: "It was a nice finish for us today. The German sailors have set a great example here. We had a lot of young teams here. We hope that the windsurfers will make a comeback in 2016. If you take a closer look, a little lower than one, two and three, then we can be very satisfied." The German women's crew had to put up with a few setbacks, but came away with a strong result in the final. And they did so in front of a very personal audience: VSaW Vice President Ulrike Schümann and a delegation from the Wannsee club had travelled to Weymouth to cheer on their club member Kathrin Kadelbach and Rike Belcher in the final.
Nadine Stegenwalner, Depty Chef de Mission of the German sailors, took stock after the final: "The majority of our team completed a good regatta here. Two years ago, nobody would have thought that we would be able to compete with the world's best in so many disciplines after the generational change. Unfortunately, the crowning glory of one or two medals was missing."
When the medal ceremonies for the 470 crews took place in the Olympic harbour in the evening, the semi-final duels of the match racers had just finished under a bright blue sky on the spectator course "The Nothe" in light winds of around six knots. With surprising winners: Tamara Echegoyen's crew prevailed 2:1 against the experienced team of Russian Ekaterina Skudina. The young Australian team led by helmswoman Olivia Price won the third race - the thriller of the day - by a tenth of a second at the finish. It was initially not ruled out that the Finnish crew would lodge a protest against this extremely narrow defeat in order to have the hint of a lead of their conquerors reviewed.
