Irish Skiff Sailors Place Fourth at Paris Olympics
There was heartbreak for Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove in Marseille today after a week of holding second overall saw the pair finish fourth in the Medal Race of the Men's Skiff event.
It was a case of so near yet so far as the Dublin crew missed the podium by three points after they returned to the starting-line to exonerate themselves for early-starting.
Unlike the previous day's attempts to hold the medal race final, today's conditions were ideal though one side of the course was favoured leaving little scope to recover lost ground.
Dickson and Waddilove could only watch from behind as Spain, New Zealand and the USA took Gold, Silver and Bronze places respectively.
"I'm pretty disappointed, we just had a bad race," said Dickson after racing. "We're pretty proud of how we sailed throughout the whole week. Fourth is still a really good result. It's just a shame that it panned out the way did."
Tricolours were to the fore in the large crowd and family, friends and other supporters were there to cheer and ultimately comfort the two skiff sailor as they returned to shore with the fleet.
"I'm pretty disappointed, but I think if we take a few days to process everything we'll look back on and be really proud of ourselves," said Waddilove. "I think it's just more about accepting that it hadn't worked out how we planned today. And that's part of our sport, that is sport - someone has to finish fourth!"
The start of the race saw four boats cross early and while three returned to exonerate themselves, the fourth was later informed by the race umpires and withdrew. This left Ireland at the back of the fleet and needing to improve by just three places to win a medal.
"It's the joy when you convert but the pain when you lose - it comes down to the fine margins of high-performance sport," commented James O'Callaghan, Irish Sailing's Performance Director. "It's quite deflating but we've been here before in the programme - it's the nature of sports."
Their coach Matt McGovern paid tribute to the pair and pointed out that the Spanish Gold medallist was on this third attempt to reach the podium.
"It's probably a bit premature to be talking about what's next but it takes time (to win medals) it takes experience, it takes resilience and perseverance, and the boys have all of that in spades," said the two-time Olympian. "I'm sure they're going to have highs and lows in the next hours and days, but they can be very proud of their performance during the week."
Meanwhile, the ILCA single-handers sailed the second day of their fleet series with both men's and women's one-person dinghy events in the early stages ahead of medal racing on Tuesday.
Two mid-fleet results for Finn Lynch leaves him in 25th overall after four races with six remaining. Eve McMahon lies 15th overall though an attempt to sail a third race and get her event back on schedule ran out of wind.
Both Irish single-handers are relishing the forecast of Mistral type conditions on Saturday when winds are likely to gust to the maximum permitted range of near Gale Force, conditions which both usually have strong performances in.