Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark know they have won at least a London 2012 bronze medal - but the British 470 Women only have their eyes on gold as they head into their medal race showdown on Friday (10 August).
It was a topsy turvy afternoon for the Brits who scored an eighth and second from their two races at Weymouth and Portland today (Wednesday 8 August). But most tellingly in the overall standings, it was the 18th place collected by Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie (NZL) in that second race that has left the Kiwis and Brits in a fight for gold.
In Olympic sailing the boats can discard their worst score of their series. This means the Kiwis now count their previous worst score of 10th to put Britain and New Zealand tied neck and neck on 33 points going into the final double points’ medal race.
To guarantee themselves at least silver the Brits simply have to sail a clean race on Friday and not get disqualified.
With the 470 Men also engaged in a Southern Hemisphere battle for gold against Australia tomorrow, the girls can’t wait to follow suit.
Saskia said: “Head to head, we’re mad for it! We’ve got a day off tomorrow, we will watch the boys hopefully doing some Aussie bashing, see if we can learn anything from them and bring it on on Friday against the Kiwis.”
Hannah said: “It was a really tricky day; really shifty and no-one really knew what was going on with the wind. We got a bit unlucky in the first race but we pulled it together and luckily it swung our way and we got our points back on the Kiwis.”
The Women’s 470 medal race is scheduled for 1pm on Friday on the spectator Nothe course.
