Olympic Games ~ Letters

Tough day for the USA. We got a 6th and an 8th while the French got a 3,1 and Canada got a 8,2. So we are 5.8 points out of third and 9 points out of 2nd. Torben Greal of Brazil clinched the gold medal with his 4th in the last race.

Athens served up a pretty typical day today. Seabreeze with the left being heavily favored. We stayed away from the fighting for the left side of the line and ultimately we payed for that. In each start we could not hold our lane and were forced to tack out to the right. I was a bit shy on the line, always mindful of not getting an OCS, but that conservatism cost us. There were some opportunities to come back from the right, Peter Bromby (BER) did it, but we could not find the lanes or the wheels to make it work.

We battled around the course, never catching on fire but did manage to come out on the good side of two close finishes. Hopefully those two points will be key on Saturday.

So now it is down to one race and we have to make up 7 points on CAN and 9 on FRA. We will have to go out and have a very good race and see where the chips fall. It is a tall order but we are tall people…Phil is anyway. We will work on our plan tomorrow with our coach, Tony Rey, who has been a fantastic help this week.

Tomorrow is a lay day for us and the Tornado’s, the only two classes left. One nice thing for the US Team is that John Lovell and Charlie Olgletree have clinched at least a Silver in the Tornado Class. They are two points out of first. So they will just let it hang out on Saturday and try to get gold.