Wearn on course for back-to-back golds despite off day

Olympic champion Matt Wearn may have had the worst day yet in the defense of his men’s dinghy crown but it was still good enough to give the Perth sailor a healthy advantage in his bid for back-to-back golds.

Two 10th place finishes in Marseille represented the 28-year-old Wearn’s lowest finishes so far in eight races but, having avoided the false start disqualification that some of his key rivals suffered, it still enabled him to stay comfortably ahead.

It meant that with two days racing left, he has a net 14-point advantage over his nearest rival, Cypriot Pavlos Kontides.

“We did the first race in the dying Mistral and it was one of those races where you didn’t really know what was going to happen,” said Wearn.

“In the second race, the westerly had kicked in and we got a race in that, but you didn’t really know how far it was going to go or if it was going to come back so it was made for some tricky racing.”

Two more qualifying races are scheduled for Monday with the medal race set for the following day.

In the high-speed kite foiling class, Townsville medal hope Breiana Whitehead, who has had consistently high placings over the past two years, had an unspectacular start, finishing eighth, fifth and twice seventh in her four races to lie eighth overall after the first day, but only 10 points off a podium place.

Australia’s mixed dinghy team of Nia Jerwood and Conor Nicholas are also in eighth place, after posting a third and a sixteenth place from their two races.

“Everyone’s making mistakes and with fewer races to go, the pressure dials up and people start making even bigger mistakes. We need to keep a calm head and it’s game on,” said Nicholas.

The young mixed multihull team of Brin Liddell and Rhiannan Brown are 12th overall, while Zoe Thomson is 20th in the women’s dinghy.