Olympics - Sailing

470 duo Vadlau/Mähr improve to 2nd place!

Lukas Mähr and Lara Vadlau

(Bild: Sander van der Borch/World SailingFree Editorial Rights)

The Austrian 470 sailors Lara Vadlau and Lukas Mähr made a big leap forward at the Olympic Games on Saturday! The ÖOC duo finished 3rd and 1st before Marseille and thus improved from 16th to 2nd place in the overall ranking. Things went less well for Lukas Haberl/Tanja Frank in the Nacra 17 class. The duo finished 16th, 12th and 14th in the first three races, resulting in 16th place overall.

On Sunday, Vadlau/Mähr and Haberl/Frank each have two races on the program. Vadlau was optimistic about the challenges ahead, but also emphasized: "It is absolutely too early to look at the overall standings now. I can promise that it will be very, very close until the Medal Race. It's important that we get our performance back on the water tomorrow."

"Unfortunately, we can no longer take full risks at the start!"
For the current medal contenders, the sailing competition got off to the worst possible start on Friday with a disqualification due to an early start. Lessons were learned from this. "Unfortunately, we can no longer take full risks at the start, as you could see in the first race, we were the very last boat out," said Vadlau. A race to catch up followed. "It was a difficult battle to get back into the top 5. We were far behind for a long time, but we didn't give up until the end. We actually have to pray three 'Our Fathers' for third place in the end," said Vadlau.

"We felt very comfortable today, and then it just flows!"
Mähr's summary was also positive. "The fact that we had such good speed on the downwind today makes us proud. This section has been our Achilles heel in recent months. But we've probably turned that into a positive - maybe that can be a plus for the next few days," Mähr suspected. The many previous training sessions in the Olympic area are also a possible advantage. "We can already make great use of the waves, water and wind in our preferred conditions. We felt very comfortable today, and then it just flows," said the Vorarlberg native.

"... that we won't finish in the top positions!"
For Haberl/Frank, the mood barometer swung in the opposite direction. "If we had named conditions in advance that we didn't want at all, they would have been today's conditions. We are a light team, we are much stronger in medium and light winds," explained Frank. She and Haberl were already aware before the start "that we probably wouldn't finish in the top positions. Nevertheless, our attitude was right, we gave it our all and fought for every point."

Haberl emphasized that not everything went wrong. "We fought. There were good phases, but also bad ones. We made the best of it. We still have nine races to go and will attack the next few days just like we did today," promised Haberl.