Peter Burling and Blaire Tuke are prohibitive bookies’ favourites to win the 49er men’s sailing gold medal and showed why today.
The New Zealanders, who won silver medal in the 49er class at the 2012 London Olympics, opened their campaign with two impressive victories. After the first day they have just two points.
Burling and Tuke have 13 world titles between them and are regarded as two of the most talented sailors on the international circuit today. They showed why in Rio.
Burling said he and Tuke were happy to score so well and avoid walking away with any high scores.
“We’ve been waiting a long time to get racing, and we’ve been really enjoying ourselves out there and I think that showed today,” he said.
The women’s 49ers got under way today as well and New Zealanders Alex Maloney and Molly Meech had two solid races for sixth (after a storming finish) and fifth. They are sixth in the overall standings.
Meech felt they had a consistent day. “On each beat we were gaining a boat so that was quite nice,” she said. “I think we shook a few of the nerves off a bit today.”
Meech’s brother, Sam, continued his laser competition and had 13th and sixth places. There are just two races remaining for the lasers and Meech is sixth with 64 points, but the field is tightly bunched and a medal is not out of the question for Meech.
The 470 men, Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox, who have had an up and down time of it, were 23rd in their only race today, and are 13th overall.
Defending women’s 470 champions Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie lost their competition lead when they were 12th in the only race today. They were going well, but lost places near the finish of the race. Aleh and Powrie are now sixth overall with 22 points.
Light winds caused many postponements and some scheduled races were not held.