Sailing: Kendall and Ashley battle on

By CHRIS BARCLAY in Athens

Barbara Kendall and Tom Ashley refused to hoist the white flag yesterday, despite their Olympic medal hopes long having vanished off the Athens coastline.

The glorious past - and promising future - of New Zealand board sailing finally found form at the Agios Kosmas Olympic Sailing Centre, albeit too late to make the Mistral class medal podium.

Triple Olympic medallist Kendall gave a telling reminder, perhaps for the last time at this level, of her capabilities by winning both the women's races yesterday.

Ashley, 20, also banked consecutive third placings and could finish as high as sixth if he can produce a similar effort in the regatta finale today and other results go his way.

Sadly for Kendall, the 1992 Olympic champion in Barcelona, fifth is probably the best she can hope for, despite winning three of the 10 completed races. A false start in race five last week penalised her 27 points, effectively sinking her hopes of securing a fourth Olympic medal.

In the opening race yesterday, Kendall surged clear to win by 31 seconds from overnight leader Yin Jian of China and Italian defending champion Alessandra Sensini.

Kendall's fighting qualities were more to the fore in her penultimate outing in the late afternoon, when she successfully overturned a 35s deficit to pip the Italian by 2s.


Kendall has tallied 54 points and will need Hong Kong's Lee Lai Shan (39) to have a shocker in order to overhaul her long-time rival and add a fourth to the gold, silver and bronze she won in Barcelona, Atlanta and Sydney, respectively.

Ashley enters the final race of his maiden Olympic campaign in 10th place on 87 points.

The Aucklander led the fleet as they rounded the second mark in the first race but then dropped back to a holding pattern in third to trail British winner Nick Dempsey.

Ashley grabbed the lead part way through before he was overtaken by Frenchman Julien Bointemps and Brazilian gold medal frontrunner Ricardo Santos.

He eventually crossed the line 1m 15s behind the Brazilian.

- NZPA