Wandsworth’s Bryony Shaw needs a strong finish in all three women’s RS:X windsurfing preliminaries to remain in medal contention at Rio 2016 this afternoon.
Finishing seventh, 15th and 12th in yesterday’s races, she dropped down to 11th place in the overall standings with six preliminaries remaining.
After the 12 preliminaries only the top ten qualify to compete in the medal race so she will be hoping for better results in races seven, eight and nine to climb in the standings.
The current world number one was the bookies’ favourite to take gold having won bronze in her first Olympics in Beijing.
But events out of her control have hampered her performance – during the first day of women’s RS:X windsurfing she had a technical problem on her kit in race one and caught a bag on her fin which brought her to a dead stop in race two.
The Team GB racer described it as a ‘nightmare day’ and yesterday’s races were no better.
Shaw could not finish inside the medal race qualification positions — finishing the day with 49 points overall, just 1.2 points off the top ten but 31 points behind Russia’s Stefania Elfutina who occupies the bronze medal position.
Italy’s Flavia Tartaglini leads the way with just 12 points, with Charline Picon of France just one point off in second.
