Today's Sailing News 

 Olympic Sailing Day 13

Day 12 was another day for medals to be awarded.  2 of the 3 Single Handed classes concluded.  Great Britain looks to have a fine chance to sweep all the single handed gold's after winning a pair today.

Weather: What should be the final day of racing should be sailed in 10-15 knots breezes largely from the North.

Europe 

Course: B

The final 2 races were sailed with medals being decided.

Star of the final day was Margiret
Matthysse of the Netherlands who won both races.  This pulled her up from 3rd to 2nd and very close to 1st.  Finishing 1st was Great Britain's Shirley Robertson who stumbled and was 16th in the first race, but clinched gold with a 3rd in the final race.

Argentina's dropped a place finishing with a bronze medal.

The USA's Courtney Becker-Dey ended the regatta in 16th.

Finn

Course: E

The Finns sailed 2 more races on ocean course E.

Great Britain's Ian Percy was one of 4 sailors to score 7 points for the day.  For Percy this helped him bring his lead to 20 points.

Irish sailor David Burrows was another 7 point scorer and is 9th.  The USA's Russ Silvestri had his best day with a 4th and a 3rd.  He is tied for 7th, 10 points from a bronze medal.  

2nd to Great Britain's Percy is Sweden's Fredik Loof with defending gold medallist  Mateusz Kusznierewicz of Poland up from 5th to 3rd.

With 2 races left Percy's gold chances are high.  A half dozen others will divide up the other 2 medals based on the last 2 races.

 Soling Match Race Semis

4 teams from Europe matched up near Sydney's Opera house to race for the right to sail for the Soling Gold Medal.

Fittingly it was two past Soling Gold Medallist's who were the winners.

German skipper lost his first race to the Netherlands but then won three straight to advance.

Denmark's team skippered by '92 Gold Medallist Jesper Bank opened with a win and a loss.  They then won 2 more races to advance.

The first team to win 4 races will be the gold medallist.

The Netherlands and Norway will see who can get to 3 and take bronze.

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 Today's Sailing News 

Day 13 will be all about sailors who already have Olympic medals winning more.  In the Star class the boats who will battle for the medals all have past medal winners at the helm.  The Soling match race final will have as skippers past Gold Medallists in the class.

Laser

The final 2 races in the Laser class would determine the medal order.  After two races the top 3 positions were just narrowly the same.

All along the battle for the lead had been between Ben Ainslie of Great Britain and Robert Scheidt of Brazil.  

In the days first race Scheidt placed 2nd with Ainslie 5th.  This gave Scheidt a 9 point lead.

In the final/gold medal race Ainslie aggressively worked on worsening Scheidt's position at the start. The pair remained behind the starting line circling like a match race for over a minute after the start. This strategy worked.  Although Ainslie finished 37th, his strategy worked.  Scheidt finished 22nd, and therefore had to count a 21st.  Ainslie was able to discard his 37th and edged Scheidt by 1 point.

Scheidt filed a protest over the incident, but after 4 hours of International Jury deliberation the protest was denied. 

In a piece of turn about in Ainslie goes from silver in 1996 to Gold in 2000.  Schedit does the reverse.

Winning bronze medal was Australian Michael Blackburn.

American John Myrdal's late regatta hot streak ended with an 18th and a 32nd.  He ended up 13th.

Star

Course: E

Enjoying the big breezes on the ocean courses, the Star's sailed three races. 

The USA's world champion Star team of Reynolds and Liljerdahl sailed into medal contention.  With results of 4th and 1st they ended the day tied for 2nd and only 5 points from 1st.

They are led by Brazil with 27 points and Great Britain with 32 points.  All teams are assured of medals.  The color of medal will be determined by race 11.

All three teams have past Olympic medallists at the helm so the pressure should be more ordinary for them.

If Brazil finishes 5th or better they win the Gold.  The British must put 6 boats between themselves and Brazil.  For the Americans a 1st place would be a good place to start.  This would give them a tiebreaker advantage over both teams (3 1sts to 2 1sts.)

So, it'll be one race for a trio of Olympic medallists sailing for more medals surrounded by other world class teams meaning any victory will be well earned.