Sailing: Silver medallists give Park food for thought

BRITISH sailors could not match the final-day goldrush of the Australian hosts at the Perth 2011 ISAF World Championships, but with silver medals yesterday for the women’s 470 crew of Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark and silver in the Laser for Nick Thompson, the final complement of six medals leaves Skandia Team GBR in decent shape seven months before the 2012 Olympic regatta.

After Australia’s Nathan Outterridge and Iain Jensen won the world title in the 49er class, defending world champion Tom Slingsby had enough of a cushion to play to the partisan grandstand crowd as he sailed to his fourth world title ahead of Thompson.

Although Britain’s big hitters, Ben Ainslie and Star gold medallists Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson, were effectively scratched from contention for different reasons, losing two more probable medals, there is plenty of food for thought for Stephen Park, the Scot who is Olympic Manager of the sailing team.

Olympic champion Paul Goodison, who is already pre-selected for the Olympics, was not only overshadowed for the second successive world championship by Thomson, but finished a slightly remote fifth. In the RS:X windsurfer class, bronze medallist Nick Dempsey was not firing on all cylinders and did not make the medal race and the young 49er duo of John Gimson and Rick Peacock crumbled over the final two days and slipped from bronze medal position to finish fourth overall.

Most encouraging was yesterday’s 470 silver medal for Mills and Clark, who ground out a win in the breezy medal race.

“We are really pleased with a silver medal as the worlds really were not a peaking event, a focus for us this season. So much of our efforts were put into just getting the selection out of the way. Silver for us is good, but we are a little disappointed because there is more to come.” said Clark.