Fickle winds continued to affect the first medal races for sailing at the Paris Olympics Friday, as officials hoped to squeeze four of them between the calm and hot morning and the strong thunderstorm expected to roll in in the late afternoon.
The women's skiffs started right after noon Friday, to the cheering of fans that waited for hours the day before under the punishing sun.
The Netherlands’ Odile van Aanholt and Annette Duetz won the gold medal with Sweden’s Vilma Bobeck and Rebecca Netzler coming in second. Sarah Steyaert and Charline Picon of France finished third, The AP reported.
Both the men’s and women’s skiffs, known as 49erFX — powerful, bird-like two-person boats — were originally scheduled for Thursday but postponed due to a lack of wind.
Picon’s partner, Jean-Emmanuel Mestre, with their daughter Lou, 7, perched on his shoulders said the stress was palpable but their first goal was to support the athletes.
“We try to maintain our routine,” said Mestre. “It’s the same for everyone.”
The medal race for the men’s skiffs started twice Thursday in Marseille before being abandoned after the light wind died, leaving athletes broiling in the heat on the water in the interval for several hours.
“It was an emotional roller coaster,” said Isaac McHardie of New Zealand, which was third entering the medal race for the men’s skiffs called 49ers.
After the skiffs, the agenda Friday has the windsurfing men’s and women’s medal races. If they can’t be run, they might be pushed back another day.
Also starting on Friday was a new sailing event, the mixed-gender dinghy called 470 — introduced this year to even out medal opportunities between men and women for the first time. And the men's and women's dinghies should be continuing their races, too, making for quite a crowd in Marseille's beautiful, monument-fringed bay.
Officials were working on alternative plans for the medal races if the weather doesn’t collaborate, as it hasn’t since the sailing competition started Sunday. Races have been routinely delayed, and a windsurfing “marathon” Wednesday was also abandoned more than an hour into it.
In sailing, points are accumulated over multiple regattas over multiple days, with the medal races usually counting for double points. But largely because of the fickle conditions, nobody in the skiffs has yet a clear grasp of the podium.
The men’s team from Spain and the women’s team from France were in the lead going into the medal races after 12 regattas.
In windsurfing, where the rules are a bit different, two athletes have made it far enough into the rankings to be guaranteed a medal — Emma Wilson of Britain and Grae Morris of Austrialia. Everyone else is still in the cliffhanger.
The uncertainty makes the delays and abandoned races particularly painful, and the heat also takes a physical toll.
On Thursday, the skiffs sat on the water in their protective gear under a punishing sun with temperatures pushing 35 degrees Celsius (low 90s), with some athletes running low on water and ice as they waited. Temperatures were expected to soar even higher on Friday.
For athletes, the biggest challenge was to be both switched on for the peak moment of their career — and relaxed enough not to waste physical and mental energy on what they can't control.
“It's part of sailing," Duetz said Thursday after the women waited about an hour in their skiffs but their race never started.
The fans were trying to take it in stride too, welcoming the skiffs back with cheers and waving flags Thursday evening after sweltering on a shadeless breakwater most of the afternoon. Among them were the families of France’s Sarah Steyaert and Charline Picon, who were first on the women’s start list.
“So exciting and so nervous and so anxious,” is how Steyaert’s father, Patrick Steyaert, summed up the wait, while Sarah’s 5-year-old daughter threw herself into her mother’s arms, weeping.
