Disappointing Start For Annalise Murphy in Laser Radial Euros Finals

23rd July 2015

#annalisemurphy – The final series in the Laser and Laser Radial European Championships 2015 have begun and the race for medals has set in but Ireland's Annalise Murphy's medal hopes took a serious hit after counting a 27 and 48 from 49 starters in the gold fleet. The National Yacht Club sailor lies 34th.

After yesterday's racing the Laser Standard and the Laser Radial Women fleets were split into gold and silver while the Laser Radial Men maintained their one fleet.

The first race in the final series was scheduled for 1pm and when the sailors took to the water a light south-western breeze was blowing with a speed of 6 – 10 knots. Quite different from yesterday's top 25 knots top speed.

The wind, however, kept changing directions making it hard for the fleets to get a clean start. The Radial Women were the first ones off while the Radial Men's fleet suffered from general recalls due to unstable wind and competitive behaviour resulting in six black flags. After three failed attempts the Radial Men came ashore around 7.30pm having had a very long day but nothing to show for it.

Sadly for the six sailors who were black flagged today that also rules them out of tomorrow's first race as their penalty of not being allowed to finish the race has not yet been executed.

After the Radial Women finished their first race the wind suddenly dropped drastically leaving absolutely no possibility of racing at all. After two hours of waiting for the wind to pick up and a general recall the gold fleet managed to finish 2nd race while silver fleet was forced to give up the 2nd race.

Alicia Cebran Martinez De Lagos (88) had a reasonable day on the water and finished 6th and 14th enabling her to maintain 1st place in the total ranking. The light wind became Bulgarian Tatiana Drozdovskaya (2), as she raced herself to a 2nd place in the total ranking finishing 3rd and 5th in today's final racing.

Tomorrow the gold and silver fleets will continue racing in the final series. The Laser Radial Men have some catching up to do and are thus scheduled to race at noon while the rest of the fleets are scheduled for 1pm.

Laser Radial Women Top Three
1. Alicia Cebran Martinez De Lagos (ESP)
2. Tatiana Drozdovskaya (BLR)
3. Tuula Tenkanen (FIN)

See all preliminary results for Laser Radial Women here.

Published in Olympic

About The Author

Afloat.ie Team

Email The Author

Afloat.ie is Ireland's dedicated marine journalism team.

Have you got a story for our reporters? Email us here.

We've got a favour to ask

More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven’t put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.

Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full–time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.

So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.