NSWIS Sailors Lead Australia’s Medal Haul

NSWIS sailors certainly contributed heavily to Australia’s success in Rio.

One gold and two silver medals were won at the Marina da Glória in a highly successful campaign for the NSWIS contingent.

Tom Burton led the way in the Laser class, making his move in a stunning display of sailing on the final day of the competition.

After heading into the medal race in second position, 10 points behind Croatia’s Tonci Stipanovic, Burton pulled a tactical move at the start line which even he conceded had a “one in 10” chance of succeeding.

The plan was to force the Croatian to make contact with his boat, have him incur a time penalty and then take off to establish the lead of at least five race positions.

Somehow, it worked to perfection and Burton dashed to third place, with Stipanovic back in eighth.

Against all the odds, it was enough to secure the gold medal.

“The percentage chance I thought that I could win the gold was pretty slim,” Burton said.

“You want to do it and you want it to come off but you see these situations at many Olympics and many other Championships and it’s quite easy to slow a guy down and then finish at the back.”

“We had a lot of talks in the last couple of days about a catch and release, get a penalty and just make it back for the start. It couldn’t have come off any better it was perfection nearly.”

Incredibly, it was the first time in 11 races the Australian had led the competition.

Conversely, Lisa Darmanin and Jason Waterhouse were the dominant crew for the first half of the series in the Mixed Nacra 17 class, but needed something special to secure their silver medal.

The Sydney cousins produced one of the races of their lives in the medal round, surging up the rankings to finish just one point off the gold medal.

“It is a little bit bitter sweet,’’ Darmanin said.

“I am not going to lie. But we sailed an incredible medal race. We could not have done any more out there.”

The Australian duo went into the medal race in fourth after disappointing results in races 11 and 12, but finished second on the final day.

It meant they needed the table topping Argentinians to finish seventh or worse to win the gold.

They watched on as the Argentinians finished sixth.

“That is probably the best finals race I have sailed in the last four years to be fair to us,’’ Waterhouse said.

“We gave ourselves a real opportunity.”

Defending 49er class Olympic champions Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen found themselves up against one of the most dominant performances of the entire Olympic program when New Zealand’s world champion duo secured gold with a day still to sail.

It meant silver was the best possible result and despite starting the day in third, Outteridge and Jensen crossed the line in fourth place in the medal race, moving past the second-ranked Germans who came eighth.

It was also good enough to hold off the fourth-placed Great Britain who could have swamped them both on the final day.

“It was stressful but we held our nerve. We had to keep passing boats and we kept our heads and did that, and kept the race in our control,” Outteridge said.

Jessica Fox went into the Games as the favourite to turn her London silver medal into gold in Rio.

But her medal bid faced drama as her competition lead in the Kayak K1 final was stripped away by a time penalty imposed by an official when she was deemed to have made contact with one of the turning markers.

It saw her slip to second overall, and then third when eventual gold medallist Maialen Chourraut of Spain swooped late.

Fox took bronze to be Australia’s most successful ever kayak athlete with two medals at just 22 years of age.

Lachlan Tame leaves Rio with a bronze medal from his first Olympic campaign.

He teamed with Ken Wallace in the sprint canoe K2 1000m to edge out Portugal for the bronze.

“I’m speechless, you couldn’t expect anything going into that race, I was little surprised at the end, so I’m stoked,” Tame said.

Cameron Girdlestone was part of the quadruple sculls crew which booked a berth in the medal race on day one of the competition.

Then came the long wait to race for gold as weather conditions forced a delay to the schedule.

The Australians went on to win silver, trumped by defending champions Germany who were forced to go through the repechage system just to make the final.

James Magnussen made the most of his only event in Rio, winning bronze with the 4 x 100m relay team.

Olympic debutant Matt Abood also picked up a medal in the event after swimming in the heats to qualify Australia for the final.

And off the water and on horse back there was a bronze medal for veteran horsemen Shane Rose and Stuart Tinney in the equestrian teams event.

The Australians led the competition heading into the final showjumping stage and held on to finish third overall.