Battling Murphy bags a bronze medal

A TENSE final race, less than half an hour in length, decided the Laser Radial class at the Sail for Gold Regatta at Weymouth on Saturday with Ireland’s Annalise Murphy claiming a bronze medal.

The Dun Laoghaire single-hander’s medal crowned a year of progression — she has won half the races of her last two events and missed selection for the medal race once in the last year.

Saturday’s ten finalists were an anxious bunch with the race committee forced to make a general recall as the bunch pushed over the line early.

Controversially, there was a delay of almost half a minute before the recall.

was sounded.

On the second-start, the fleet crossed in unison on time with Murphy opting for the centre of the short line, with gold medal contenders Marit Bouwmeester (Holland) and Evi Van Acker (Belgium) match-racing each other for advantage.

The two-lap race on Portland’s former naval harbour was blessed with sunshine but with a fickle breeze.

Murphy had a mathematical chance for silver but her main rival for the bronze, France’s Sophie de Turckheim ruled herself out of contention and was obliged to retire for three breaches of excessive use of propulsion other than wind and seamanship — use of body kinetics or pumping the sails.

Murphy almost ruined her chances by sailing far to the left of the course while the fleet stayed towards the centre on the final beat. She sailed across the finish with a place to spare to take her place on the podium.

Ireland’s other sailors had mixed form at the regatta which attracted 1,050 competitors from 66 nations.

Peter O’Leary and David Burrows sailed most of the event inside the top ten of the Star class and seemed assured for a place in the medal race final. But a black flag disqualification on Friday followed by a 20th place dropped them to 12th and out of the running. However, the pair emerged best of the two contenders in the Irish class selection trials for London 2012 as Max Treacy and Anthony Shanks could not muster form for the event that was marked by strong winds for most of the six days of racing.

Attention now switches to qualifying Ireland at the ISAF Sailing World Championships at Perth in December where places in London 2012 will be decided.