http://www.sailing.org/olympics2004/results/TornadoOverall.aspGo for Gold, Bundy / Forbes
2004 Olympics Athens News
Fri, 13 Aug 2004 to Sun, 29 Aug 2004
Olympics: Tornado and Star previews
Sat, 21 Aug 2004
Racing begins in the Tornado catamaran and Star keelboat classes in Athens today with Australian crews among the favourites.
Darren Bundock and John Forbes, silver medallists in the Tornados at Sydney 2000, have completed a very thorough campaign towards this Olympics, down to having a spare boat that is equally ready to race as their ‘front line’ boat.
They undertook a comprehensive sailcloth analysis before concluding that Dacron, with the technology going back more than 30 years had better shape retaining qualities than more recent exotic cloths utilising carbon fibre, Kevlar and other ‘exotics’
The Australian team is the only one in the Olympic Tornado fleet using a Dacron mainsail. Their sails are by Ullman Italy, Giorgio Zuccoli’s old loft, now run by Pablo Soldano.
Forbes and Bundock looked at all the synthetic options including Cuben fibre, which gave promising results for the US team at this year’s worlds and against the initial scepticism of coach Mike Fletcher decided to keep using Dacron as they had for the past four years.
They decided to accept the disadvantage of a little more weight in the cloth but did save weight by going lighter on the reinforcing, like corner patches.
‘Shape is everything and we found Dacron has best qualities,’ Forbes said. ‘The only negative is the extra weight.’
They have practised for the past three weeks on the Saronic Gulf with the Germans, Roland Gaebler and Gunnar Struckman and the Greeks Iordanis Paschalides/Christos Garefis. Yesterday the Tornados sailed a practice race.
Forbes said this morning: ‘We are going alright.’
He expects the strongest opponents will again be the Sydney gold medallists, Roman Hagara and Hans Peter Steinacher of Austria and the current world champions Santiago Lange/Carlos Espinola (Argentina).
The French, Olivier Backes/Laurent Voiron and Spaniards, Fernando Echavarri/Anton Paz, could also be up there, Forbes predicted.
Australians Colin Beashel and David Giles, world champions in 1998, Olympic bronze medalists in 1996, remain in the top frame in the star-studded Star keelboat class on form in European regattas over the past two years.
Newcomers from the Finn class – big boys who know how to hike hard – have made an impact in the class since Sydney 2000. One of them, Freddie Loof, crewed by Anders Elkstrom (Sweden) won both the world and European championship this year.
Another, Ian Percy (Great Britain), crewed by Steve Mitchell, won the world championship in 2002.
Multi-talented US sailor Paul Cayard, crewed by Phil Trinter in winning the US trials beat the 2000 gold medallist Mark Reynolds and are rated a strong chance by Colin Beashel.
by Bob Ross
