Congratulations to Our Silver Medalists

Outstanding charge by Johnny and Charlie.... Way to Peak in the last 3 months before the Olympics!

Congratulations and Good Luck in the Future
Mark Schneider

Charlie and Johnny did superbly well, and deserve our best accolades for this accomplishment. A huge wince for them when their spin halyard snagged the stupid videocamera---and the camera being there wasn't their fault (or their choice?): this loss of normal spin dowsing was very, very costly. Note-- they never gave up.

What are those crowns called and made of that they put on all the medalists' heads?

They are olive wreaths, or laurels or whatever, that was an original olympics thing that they have brought back for the olympics return to athens.

Not to take away from any silver medal winner but how about this one :

Congratulations th the Gold medal winners Roman Hagara and Hans Peter Steinacher of Austria. A gigantic accomplishment has been forfilled by these sailors from a landlocked nation without a great sailing tradition. They succesfully defended their 2000 Sidney Gold with no less than 4 1st places in 11 heats during very trying conditions. They were by far the most consistant crew on the Olympic Tornado series with only one out of character 14th place in the whole series. By taking out the gold they have beaten F18 world champions Bundock and Forbes, who are regarded to be the most succesful multihull sailors of all time, and current 2004 Tornado world champions Santiago Lange/Carlos Espinola from Argentina. Not to forget current 2004 European champions Mitch Booth and Herbert Dercksen. Hagara and Steinacher showed a glimps of their ability to win gold at the 2004 US nationals but were in the upper part of top 10 in any other major tornado events in 2004. Their win and dominance at this 2004 Olympiad reflected a perfectly timed peaking of their abilities 4 years after doing the same at Sidney. The very well sailing American Team of Lovell/Ogletree did put up the best fight of all the teams named earlier but were referred to the silver medal with a clear gap in overall points by the Austrian team turning in a 1st in teh last race as well. Hagara and Steinacher made sure that there won't be any ambiquaty about their claim to gold. Well done.

I know people of some nationality loose interest fully and suddenly if their team doesn't get the highest place on the podium but seriously the way the Austrians took gold earns them to be the topic of any written piece instead of just an ornament in the story of the silver medalist.

Wouter

Well done to all. We did not shine (this time) in the T.

9 for team GBR

Yngling
Shirley Robertson/Sarah Ayton/Sarah Webb GOLD

Finn
Ben Ainslie GOLD

49er
Chris Draper/Simon Hiscocks BRONZE

Mistral Men
Nick Dempsey BRONZE

470 Men
2, Nick Rogers/Joe Glanfield SILVER

Crowning with laurel is a very old tradition - the one that gave origin to the word "laureate".
In Latin languages a fancy way to say "he won" is to say "he took the victory laurels".
Cheers,

And also caused the saying, "resting on your laurels"?

Yes, exactly the same as in Spanish and Portuguese and I guess other latin languages too. I didn't know the same expression was also used in English.

Hey Simon,
I think we all tend to be too easily disappointed with our sportsmen/women when they don`t succeed, when in relative terms a 9th place at the Olympics is still one hell of an acchievement. Hell, even the guys who came last at the event are still the best sailors in their country, and would show most of us the way round a course from a considerable distance, and only placed last due to the incredibly high standard of sailing at such an event. This can be seen by the fact that with one race left, the Australians found themselves dropping from a bronze medal place to 6th, testament that everyone there are brilliant sailors.
Well done to ALL the compititors, just getting there is an acchievement very few of us could ever emulate.

Cheers
Steve

More then 200 countries compete in the Olympics and only 17 classify to enter the Tornado regatta. The last boat theoretically trails almost 200 country champions. Some countries don't even try, but this gives a better perspective of the difficulty just to be there.

Those are all great sailors, from first to last.

Cheers,