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Saturday, September 23
McKee brothers fall short of gold
Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia -- Out in the fluky winds of Sydney
Harbor, brothers Jonathan and Charlie McKee of Seattle watched a
couple of Finns fly off with the 49er class Olympic gold medal.
The McKees seemed sure to contend right through the 16th and
final fleet race in the Olympic debut of the winged skiff. But they
didn't play the wind shifts nearly as well as Finland's Thomas
Johanson and Jyrki Jarvi, who locked up the gold on Saturday
(Friday night ET) with one race to sail.
The Finns pumped their fists as they zipped across the finish
line in second place in the 15th fleet race, knowing they'd
clinched. They were third and first in the day's other two races,
their best day in a consistent series. Overall, they had eight
top-three finishes.
The McKees, meanwhile, had their worst day of the regatta, with
finishes of seventh, sixth and 11th.
The other two medals will be decided in Monday's final race. The
McKees, both former Olympic medalists, are in contention with
Britain and Spain.
"On the one hand we're happy just to be here in contention for
any of the medals," said skipper Jonathan McKee. "Our goal coming
in was if we could fight it out for the medals, we'd be pretty
happy. We sailed so well early on that we put ourselves in a strong
position and today just wasn't our day, so that hurts a little
bit."
The McKees had won fleet races each of the previous three days
and held a slight lead over the Finns.
"It was a little trickier and a little more random out there
today," McKee said. "The Finnish guys just handled it amazingly.
They were brilliant at every turn."
Johanson and Jyrki showed flawless tactics.
"It's a dropoff game," Johanson said. "Some guys make
mistakes, and the next day they're not fighting for medals."
The 49er, a high-performance, winged skiff, is making its
Olympic debut. It was designed along the lines of the popular
Sydney 18-footer.
Jonathan McKee, 40, won a gold in the Flying Dutchman in 1984.
Charlie McKee, 38, won the bronze in the 470 in 1988.
The fluky winds brought mixed results for two Americans sailing
their first races.
Star skipper Mark Reynolds and Finn skipper Russ Silvestri each
had a third-place finish and a bad race in the winds and choppy
seas on the Pacific Ocean.
Silvestri, in his first Olympics, was eighth overall in the
25-boat Finn fleet. Reynolds, in his fourth straight games, was
10th in the 16-boat Star fleet.
Silvestri, of Tiburon, Calif., got his third place in the first
fleet race, then finished 18th.
He led at the first mark of the first race.
"It's taken me 16 years to get to the Olympics, and getting to
the first mark first in the first race, that was pretty exciting,"
Silvestri said.
"I was getting all teary-eyed. My Olympic moment," he joked.
"I was amazed how relaxed and not stressed I was."
Reynolds, of San Diego, finished 14 in the first race, then
recovered from a poor start in the second race for his third place.
"It was tough, like we expected," said Reynolds, 44, who won
the gold medal in 1992 and the silver in 1988. He and his crewman,
46-year-old Magnus Liljedahl of Miami, are reigning world
champions.
In the first race, Reynolds headed out to the right side at the
start, which proved to be the wrong move because the wind was
stronger on the left side. Plus, he said they went the wrong way
sailing downwind all three times. In the second race, they gained
from shifts on the windward first leg.
The breeze topped out at about 8 knots and was about 5-6 at the
finish, when the boats literally creaked to the line in the first
race.
The Stars and Finns will sail 11 races.
Europe skipper Courtenay Becker Dey of The Dalles, Ore., the
1996 bronze medalist, was 16th overall after finishing 14th and
19th. Laser skipper John Myrdal of Kailua, Hawaii, slipped to 19th.
He was disqualified in the fifth race for being over the line
early, then was second in the next race.
Australia's Darren Bundock and John Forbes clinched the silver
medal in the Tornado class, a day after Austria's Roman Hagara and
Hans Peter Steinacher clinched the gold.
The American crew, John Lovell of New Orleans and Charlie
Ogletree of Newport Beach, Calif., have no shot at the bronze. They
won Saturday's 10th fleet race, but were disqualified following a
protest hearing Saturday night. The jury ruled that the Americans
failed to give New Zealand room to pass a mark.
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