Sailing: Official admits errors in soling tiebreak system

A top sailing official has conceded that the authors of tie-break system for the Olympic regatta had "got it wrong".

The New Zealand Soling crew of Rod Davis, Don Cowie and Alan Smith have been forced into a cut-throat one-race sail-off against the Netherlands today to determine who will advance to the semifinals.

The New Zealanders were told on Tuesday that they had qualified for the last four on countback over the Dutch after the round-robin quarterfinal stage.

This was because they had finished higher than the Netherlands in last week's preliminary fleet racing phase.

But Dutch skipper Roy Heiner yesterday successfully won a protest over the race committee's interpretation of the tie-break section of the sailing instructions.

The jury decided that the wording was inexact and could be used to favour New Zealand or the Netherlands depending on which clause was highlighted.

The upshot is the sudden-death race on Sydney harbour, scheduled to begin 1pm (NZ time).

Even though a race-off is not mentioned in the section covering round-robin series, the jury determined that this was "as fair an arrangement as possible".

Jury president Bryan Willis admitted that the authors of the tie-break rules had made a mistake.

"To incorporate the fleet races into the tie-break is very unusual," he said.

"It's unique for this regatta and, to be honest, they got it wrong."

Asked why a sail-off had not been included in the sailing instructions, Willis replied: "Good point."

"The idea was to invent a tiebreak that is possible always to break the tie, so it wasn't necessary to build in a sail-off," he said.

"This was simply a decision that was equitable to those boats involved."

New Zealand yachting team manager Russell Green said there was some ambiguity in the wording of the tiebreak, but only if interpreted in a narrow sense.

The belief in the New Zealand camp from the moment Davis and his crew crossed the finish line to win their last quarterfinal race against Norway was that they were through.

Coach Tom Schnackenburg did a calculation at the time and told Green that the Dutch had been knocked out.

"Tom read it through and said you go on the fleet races," Green said.

"Everyone else I've spoken to said you go on the fleet races. If you look at the overall intention of the rule, it's to go to the fleet races."

Green said Davis, Cowie and Smith had been on an "emotional rollercoaster" in the 24 hours between the end of the quarterfinals and the release of the jury's decision late yesterday afternoon.

But he had no concerns about their mental state for the sail-off.

"They're hardened competitors - two (Davis and Cowie) of them have won medals before," he said.

"The pressure's on the other guys as well."

Whoever comes out on top will meet world No 1 Germany in a best-of-five race semifinal on Friday. The other semifinal involves world No 2 Denmark and Norway.

The winners will battle out the gold and silver on Saturday, with the losers sailing off for bronze.

- NZPA