Peter Burling and Blair Tuke have received their Silver medals in the mens 49er class, and the 470 Womens pairing of Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie have guaranteed themselves at least silver if not better, when their medal race is sailed on Friday.
Todays medal for the young pair of 49er Sailors was the 100th Olympic medal for New Zealand. It was also the first non-boardsailing medal for the New Zealand Sailing Team in twenty years.
Were really proud to be the hundredth New Zealand medal said 21 year old skipper Peter Burling. It was a really good day on the water and a really proud moment for us.
Peter and Blair sailed their final double point medal race to a second place finish, although they would have been awarded the medal regardless of the points gained in this race.
We had a good race today, we went out there with the aim to go out on a high and take the race out Peter continued.
Coincidentally, Peter and Blairs silver medals were presented to them by New Zealander Barbara Kendall who has won three Olympic Boardsailing medals for herself.
In the Womens 470 final two opening series races today, Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie had mixed results, opening up with a second place finish in the first race, and the second race was their worst of the regatta to date.
It looks like its all on for the medal race said Jo Aleh after sailing. They are tied on equal points for first place overall, and have a large buffer on the third placed team.
And regarding the possibility to medal she said: We cant really think about it until its all over, weve still got one more race Jo said, although she sounded eager to do Peter and Blair up one.
They got silver; well try to do better
The 470 medal races on Thursday (for the men) and Friday (for the women) will be the final two races sailed by the NZ Olympic Sailing Team at London 2012.
Current Standings- Day 1 August 8th , 2012
1st = Jo Aleh/ Polly Powrie (470 W) after 8 of 11 races (2, 6, 2, 5, 10, 4, 1, 1, 2, 18)
5th Paul Snow Hansen/ Jason Saunders (470 M) after 10 of 11 races (28DSQ, 3, 5, 4, 16, 3, 7, 9, 13, 12)
Final Standings
SILVER - Peter Burling/ Blair Tuke (49er)
5th Andrew Murdoch (Laser)
5th Hamish Pepper/ Jim Turner (Star)
7th JP Tobin (RS:X)
7th Dan Slater (Finn)
9th Stephanie Hazard, Jenna Hansen, Susannah Pyatt (Match Racing)
20th Sara Winther (Laser Radial)
