Sailing: Lack of wind frustrates sailors

More than five hours of frustrating drifting on the Clyde off Largs yesterday proved to be in vain for the sailors awaiting racing at the Laser Radial World Championships.

The mirror-like waters were only occasionally ruffled by light airs from conflicting directions, and only - as the race officers' version of Murphy's Law would have it - as the appropriate signals were made, was there anything close to a breeze.

Sari Multala, Finland's defending world champion goes into the final day of scheduled racing with a lead of seven points over Marit Bouwmeester of the Netherlands. It will be an interesting finale.

Forecasts conflict as to how much or how little breeze there will be and the opinions seem to be towards either extreme.

Even if there are three races for the Women's gold fleet there can only be one discarded result and Bouwmeester has not finished outside the top ten so far, whilst Multala has a weighty 49th from Race 4 as her throwout.

In the Men's fleet it is Poland's Marcin Rudawski, the defending champion, who enters the last day at Largs with a six-point lead and only a seventh place as his discard, while fellow Pole Wojciech Zemke lies second and the USA's impressive 16-year-old Mitchell Kiss is third.