Sailing: No luck but they're alive

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

As dejected bowman Alan Smith sailed across the finish line on Thursday, he reminded Rod Davis and Don Cowie how lucky they were: "At least we're still alive."

They had just lost the bizarre sail-off that eliminated them from the Olympics - something the Manly ferry had already tried and narrowly failed to do.

This is not a sob story or a list of sorry excuses. But the Kiwi Soling sailors had one hell of a 48 hours before their Olympic medal hopes expired.

The clock began ticking on Tuesday afternoon, when the Kiwis were told they were in the semifinals - and then they weren't because of a tiebreak furore.

The next day, after a tense, six-hour wait, the stalemated jury decided New Zealand would have to race for their place with the aggrieved Dutch.

On Thursday morning, they were stranded for an hour on the bus from the athletes' village because of the women's 20km walk. Then Davis lost the coin toss for the preferred side of the start-line.

"As the boys were backing the boat out of the marina they hit a Star boat," Davis said, throwing his hands in the air.

The worst was to come. Out on the harbour, the New Zealanders came close to tragedy as they waited for the race to start - their 1000kg boat was almost wiped out by a ferry.

"We started sailing upwind, looking at the sails and the compass. Then suddenly we saw the propeller of the ferry right there - flat-out reversing towards us," Davis said.

Somehow the two craft missed each other, but only by eight metres, the length of a Soling.

"Alan said it can't get any worse than being dead," Davis said.

And then they wondered if it could. In the sudden-death sail-off, the Kiwis won the start, but one-third of the way up the first beat, Dutch skipper Roy Heiner false-tacked and caught them out.

Davis sailed like a demon downwind, getting within centimetres of his training buddy Heiner, but at the finish-line he was six seconds behind the Dutchman. And then it was all over.

Back on land, Davis tried to walk through to the Kiwi boatshed to get a fizzy drink, but officials stopped him dead without his athlete's tag.

"Boy, once you're eliminated from the Olympics, you're really eliminated," he sighed.

Davis did not get to win another Soling gold to match the one he picked up for the United States 16 years ago. Instead he was bundled out of these Games fifth, the same place he and Cowie finished in the Star class at the previous Olympics.

It was a difficult way to go. In fact, a sail-off like this has never happened before, and probably will not again.

"I feel hard done by, for sure. We're at the Olympics - it shouldn't happen like this," he said. "It's like the gymnasts, where the vault was too low. That's just not good enough at this level either.

"Other people don't know what to say to us. It's like a death in the family."

Heiner said he almost cried for his friend Davis after they crossed the line.

"I feel very sad for Rod. It hits something in your system and you feel very sorry for them," he said, before getting ready for his semifinal showdown on Friday with three-time Olympic gold medallist German Jochen Schumann.

Davis will stay on at Rushcutter's Bay, as painful as it is.

He will help coach New Zealand's Star crew, Gavin Brady and Jamie Gale: "Even if it doesn't help them, it's therapy for me."

The Kiwis are New Zealand's last medal hope on the water, but in eighth place with four races to go, their chances are purely mathematical now.