Windsurfer (Neil Pryde RS:X), Women

Unlike the men’s event, the women’s event was very close, with a dramatic medal race. The final result, saw only seven points separating the gold medal winner from sixth place. After the preliminary races, the very constant Russian Stefaniya Elfutina was jointly in the lead on 55 (net) points, without winning a single race, along with the Italian Flavia Tartaglini, winner of four of the first seven races. Three sailors followed with 60 points each: France’s Charline Picon, eighth in 2012, but was subsequently the 2014 World Champion, PR China’s Chen Peina, who had a fantastic last day of the preliminaries winning three races, and Israel’s Maayan Davidovich, like Elfutina a solid performer. Only one point behind was Spain’s Marina Alabau, the gold medalist in London 2012, and another seven behind and obviously with a realistic chance of a medal was Lilian de Geus from the Netherlands. But the result of the medal race, with its doubling of points, changed everything.

Tartaglini and Davidovich placed only eighth and ninth dropping to seventh and eighth overall. De Geus, won the medal race and gained twelve points against Elfutina, who received 14 points for her seventh place and just held on to the bronze medal with just a one-point advantage. Alabau Neira’s fifth place was only good enough to consolidate her fifth place at the end of the preliminaries. The big winners of the medal race were Picon and Chen, with Picon’s second place giving her a total of 64 points which turned out to be good enough for gold. Chen, level with her after the preliminaries, moved forward from sixth to second place on the downwind leg, but had to give way to Picon and settle for silver, two points behind.