Sailing: Kiwi adds to Aussie tally

A New Zealander has won another Olympic yachting medal -but for some unfathomable reason, it won't be going on the national tally.

Jenny Armstrong, Dunedin-born and raised and a Kiwi Olympian, on Monday clinched a medal in the women's 470 dinghy on Rushcutters Bay.

The colour of her success will not be determined until Wednesday's final race.

But the colour of her wetsuit is green and gold. Yep, our Kiwi Jenny is these days an Aussie.

Armstrong is skippering a boat for Australia after moving across the Tasman four years ago.

It's a wonder that the Aussies can claim the medal at all - Armstrong's crewmate, Belinda Stowell, is also an import, from Zimbabwe.

On Monday, Armstrong and Stowell won the last race of the day to lead the fleet and ensure themselves a top-three placing with one race to go.

The genuine New Zealand crew, Melinda Henshaw and Jenny Egnot, crashed out of medal contention after three disastrous races in a row.

"I'm glad today is behind us," Armstrong said afterwards.

"I haven't been getting much sleep lately.

"You try to treat this like any other race, but it just isn't."

Thirty-year-old Armstrong has been to an Olympics before, sailing for her native country at the Barcelona Games, where she was a frustrating fourth in the single-handed Europe dinghy.

After missing out in the 1996 Olympic trials at Whangaparaoa, Armstrong moved to Sydney with her husband, Erik Stibbe, who was coaching the Australian sailing team.

She joined Elle Racing, the failed all-women's round-the-world race campaign backed by supermodel Elle Macpherson - where she met Stowell.

The two women were the only dinghy sailors in the crew and struck up a friendship that led to today's sailing partnership.

They were the surprise Olympic trial winners, beating three-time Olympians Jenny Danks and Abby Bucek by a dramatic countback.

Since then they have been crowned the European champions and picked up a silver at this year's world championships.

Stowell was a world champion before the pair even met - winning the 420 world title in 1995.

Apparently, she is a descendant from an African chief and speaks four languages. The reason she took up sailing, she says, is because she failed to inherit any athletics genes from the warrior chief, and could not run to save herself.

Stowell's boyfriend is Australian Olympic Laser sailor Michael Blackburn, who is in third place halfway through his regatta.

Armstrong and Stowell are coached by Ukranian Victor Kovalenko, who had coached Ruslana Taran and Olena Pakholchyk to Olympic glory.

After a lay day today, the Kiwi-Zimbabwean-Australians can only be beaten for gold if they finish badly in the final race.

Germans Nicola Birkner and Wibke Buelle would have to finish eight places ahead of tjhem to steal the gold.

The women with the best names in the fleet, American veteran JJ Isler and crewmate Pease Glaser, are the only other crew with an outside shot of winning.

The American Soling crew, coached by former Team New Zealand skipper Russell Coutts, now of a Swiss address, have failed to make the quarter-finals of the Olympic matchracing phase.

Despite Coutts' efforts from the coach boat on Sydney Harbour, the crew skippered by Olympic bronze medallist Jeff Madrigali finished bottom of the final qualification round.

New Zealand's crew, Rod Davis, Don Cowie and Alan Smith, are medal favourites in the round-robin starting on Tuesday.