Rio 2016 Olympics: Nacra 17 Day 2, New Generation Charging

Impressive set of pics, all images courtesy of Daniel Smith / World Sailing & Jesús Renedo / Sailing Energy Photographer Team. Click images for HQ & Slidehow. Thursday gallery for all classes at World Sailing Fb. Some complained on the venue with reason on the water problems, but in the end Rio is really a special place —

Nacra 17 Day 2 , Four Races completed in the breeze.
A tough day at the office for the Olympic sailors. Rio provided the wind power to complete 4 races with the Nacras 17 reaching 20knots downwind.
The fleet (or at least the majority of it) has been sailing, competing & training for 4 years preparing themselves for such conditions. The high wind specialists had their day with windsurfer Nicole van der Velden & F18 World Champ Thijs Visser dominating in the first and last race of the day , both bullets for the Aruban crew.

In between the wonder kids from Australia, Jason Waterhouse & Lisa Darmanin showed us that indeed they were prepared to compete in Rio for the medals, two bullets of their own in the 2nd & 3rd race of the day to grab the lead of the Olympic regatta.

The British squad had a great team during the campaign, the internal competition gave an additional drive to Ben Saxton & Nicola Groves. Scoring upto now all top 5 minus the discard (a 7th…!) they have put themselves in tie for the lead with the Aussies.

The new generations have done their catracing performance experience mainly in F18 , also in the F16, and two of them put pedal to the metal to climb to third overall, Vittorio Bissaro & Silvia Sicouri started the day with two protests wins from yesterday, but it was clear the Italians are hunting the podium on the water, placing three consecutive 3rds and a 7th in the last race of the day.

New Zealanders Gemma Jones & Jason Saunders had a progressive performance: 7,5,4 & 2 to secure a fourth overall. SUI Matias Buhler & Nathalie Brugger had sadly bad day: 6,19,11 & 18 or a 7th behind AUT Zajak-Frank.

All crews in the top 4 are young powerful sailors who had shown already excellent performance including wins during the last 4 years campaign, you need to add inherited longtime catsailing skills before coming to the Olympic arena for AUS & ITA. Handling & speed pay high dividends when the breeze is on, relegating a bit tactics and long time know how.

But the ‘old’ guard went to Rio to keep their glory alive. Tornado legend Santi Lange and Ceci Carranza weren´t going to let the kids to steal the show opening a difficult gap to hunt in coming days.
Lange himself told our major sport network he had a tough day on the short course (also remember he comes from a lung surgery). He was happy still (he should) on their good average performance_ 13,2,12 & 6 , an excellent result for the day considering the talented kamikaze youngsters he had in front.
The Argentinians stands in 5th overall in medal zone for the moment.
Still 6 races to go and the final double point Medal Race.

So the pressure will go now to the new generation top guns in the top 4, leading the fleet and with discard margin for them all they are set for great things, but this is the Olympic Regatta, at the end of the day the kids will need to combine their speed with temper , knowing there is a guy who has won medals in the last two Multihull Olympics and will try to apply cruising mode upto the MR to play his final cards.
The Aussies have another ‘old Fox’ to help them out, Tornado Olympics Silver medalist Andrew Landenberger is coaching them. SUI is also backed by Landy’s Olympic teammate, another living Legend like Mitch Booth who raced against Lange at Beijing.

With the actual scenario being described above, it’s still necessary to mention that if one crew demonstrated handling, speed and Master winning tactics to the point of being untouchable in the past four years those sailors would be Billy Besson & Marie Riou.
They cannot be taken out of the equation or analisys, they literally destroyed the competition in any condition and venue you can think of,  they are only being restricted now to dominate at Rio due to Billy sudden back disk problem. The French are holding 15th overall.

Lets put it this way: Someone at the end of the event will ‘owe’ them a Medal.
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Day 2: Follow live updates from our twitter bar below. Above links for results & tracking embedded and fixed in every CSN page below main banner. Report from Day 1 at catsailingnews.com/2016/08/rio-2016-nacra-17-day-1.html   –

Full report later along pics when available. Results after today’s 4 races below & here

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