Pressure on O’Leary and Milne in Star class

IT IS now up to Cork’s Peter O’Leary and Stephen Milne to rescue Ireland’s chances of a memorable result from this Olympic regatta, but the Star class pair have some work on their hands in a white hot fleet after sailing to two 13th places, their worst scores so far, yesterday.

After seven races sailed, O’Leary and Milne lie 14th in the 16-boat fleet, while their British training partners Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson launched themselves into second place overall yesterday after finishing second and first, to lie three points behind Sweden’s Freddie Loof and Anders Ekstrom.

All four top crews in the class are steered by past Olympic medallists, formerly top protagonists in the Finn fleet, while Brazil’s world champions Robert Scheidt and Bruno Parada lie eighth.

Ireland’s Ciara Peelo suffered in Sunday’s strong winds, as one of the lightest, smallest sailors in the Laser Radial class when she could only make a 24th and 25th, but while she bounced back with a solid 10th in what was to be her last race of these Olympics, she misses out on the cut for the top 10 boats who will contest today’s medal race by 10 places and 36 points.

“Ciara was really a lot above her breeze range on Sunday and that hurt her results in the end, it was really not typical Qingdao conditions,” concluded Ireland’s performance director James O’Callaghan.