Ben Ainslie battles hard to improve position - Beijing Olympics 2008
The results on the second day of competition may say that the Yngling Girls stay on top, Ben Ainslie has moved up from 3rd to 2nd and the 49er duo of Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes have gone straight in at No 1, but that doesn't tell the whole story.
The reality is that Ainslie had to shake off several set backs whilst Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson had to not so much dig themselves out of trouble as excavate.
As a 24-carat favourite for the Finn class gold medal, Ainslie is having to sail more conservatively than his predator’s instinct would like. He sought to avoid two potential penalty incidents in each of yesterday’s races which he scored a 4th and 1st.
"They were good solid results considering I had a few issues,” said Ainslie, feeling as if he might be in the crosswires of some of his rivals.
One such issue was with series leader, American Zach Railey, and bore an uncanny resemblance to the Briton’s second race disqualification in Athens. Again Ainslie thought he was perfectly able to squeeze across Railey’s bow whilst on the non-right-of-way port tack.
"He kind of thought he’d push the issue and make life difficult for me,” explained Ainslie. Bitten once in Athens with a post-race disqualification, he played safe a second time in Qingdao, taking two penalty turns on the water.
Ainslie lost lots of ground but this only cranked up his motivation level. He grabbed forfeited distance back on the final downwind leg and finished 4th. It was a snapshot of why the triple Olympic medallist man is so hard to beat. Setbacks spur him on even more.
A similar incident occurred in Race 4 in congestion at the leeward mark.
Ainlsie said: “As soon as I get near anyone they seem to shout ‘Protest!’ at me, so I lost quite a bit of ground there too.
“It’s difficult. Because in my position I just want to stay out of trouble and it almost forces you to be too cautious as I ended up giving away quite a lot of distance.
"It’s hard, though, but it’s the nature of the Olympic Games and as I have learnt in the past, you have to keep your nose clean and stay out of trouble.”
Whilst Ainslie sought incident avoidance, the Yngling Girls required recovery of lost places.
"Our processes, as ever, helped us stay in the race,” explained Wilson.
At times though, it appeared as if this self-same process was putting a good position at risk.
The Yngling Girls routinely gybed to the middle of the course, splitting from their rivals, and in the second of the day’s two races cut a lonely figure out on the right-hand side of the course with only one of their 14 rivals going the same way.
"The conditions of the day meant you had to be quite strong with your positioning” said Wilson.
Yet this is what makes the Girls so formidable. They managed to turn an 8th into a 4th in the first of the day’s races and then recover from 14th to 7th in the second. In doing so, some of their key rivals wobbled too. As a result the Girls increased their lead after four races, effectively one third of the way through their event.
"It’s what we love about sailing,” explained Wilson. "The wind gives opportunities and the strength of our team is to convert them into something.”
Where the Sarahs and Ainslie can lean on their experience of previous Olympics, Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes came through their first ever day’s Games’ competition in style.
“We were obviously pretty nervous before today, being our first Olympics,” said Morrison. "But we probably built it up in our heads to be more than it actually was. It was still a sailing race, and Ben and I are normally pretty good at that.”
Four more British crews go into competition on Monday: Athens silver medallists Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield, and their Women’s 470 team mates Christina Bassadone and Saskia Clark; and Nick Dempsey, Athens bronze medalist, and Bryony Shaw in the RS:X windsurfer event.
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