Sailing Duo Begin Their London Campaign
WAIS athletes Elise Rechichi and Belinda Stowell began the defence of Rechichi’s Beijing 2008 gold medal with a solid day in the 470 women’s fleet.
The pair, who both have claimed Olympic gold, were 14th in their first London 2012 race, coming home strong in race two to finish seventh, leaving them 11th overall.
“We had to fight hard today,” said Stowell. “We showed some great promise in certain things that we were working on really hard in the lead up to this, ticked off those boxes but we just let a few boats through a couple of times and had a few little glitches with equipment. We can easily fix those and be ready to go for tomorrow.”
Rechichi said that the pair was happy to finally be racing, after watching the other nine fleets get underway over the last week.
“It’s taken so long and sort of felt like it was never going to arrive a few days ago,” said Rechichi. “It was good to get the first day out of the way, could have been better, but we’re really happy to have it out of the way. We’re happy with our speed, we’re really fast but just let a couple of boats here and there get away, if we can work on those little things across all conditions we’ll be in good shape.”