Soling sails into a storm

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

Rod Davis will learn on Wednesday if he has survived a protest and will take part in a sail-off for an Olympic medal.

A jury will determine whether Davis and his Soling crew-mates, Don Cowie and Alan Smith, will stay in the semifinals after scraping in by the width of a spinnaker.

After a harrowing day on and off the water, the Kiwis were on the right side of 30 centimetres and four different countbacks to take the final top four spot.

But last night Dutch skipper Roy Heiner lodged a protest claiming that the tie-break system was unfair.

The New Zealanders, already wracked with nerves and exhaustion, will have to wait until midday to learn their fate.

In the final race of the Soling quarter-finals on a bleak Sydney Harbour, the Davis crew scrambled to beat Norwegian skipper Herman Horn Johannessen by the length of a forearm.

Then off the water, someone with a mathematical bent had to split a three-way tie to determine the last two semifinalists.

Almost too fraught to speak, the Kiwis spent the long tow back to Rushcutters Bay with no idea of whether they were still in the medal hunt or if they would be packing for home.

"It couldn't get any closer," Cowie said, shaking his head.

"I guess we got lucky."

At the end of the day's racing, they were tied on two wins with Norway and the Netherlands.

The first three methods of solving the tie-break failed.

Under the first option, they all had one win apiece against each other.

In the second method, they had all lost to the skipper with the most wins, three-time Olympic champion Jochen Schumann of Germany.

The same applied in their results with second semifinalist Dane Jesper Bank.

Finally, the officials went right back to the race results from the fleet racing more than a week before.

The Norwegians got through, because they won the fleet racing, and New Zealand were second.

The unfortunate Dutch are now contesting the methods used. But it could all be over before it begins - there was speculation on Tuesday night that Heiner had not filed his protest in time.

"This whole thing has been tough for everyone," Cowie said. "It's dragging on too long.

"We thought we sailed quite well today, but then we didn't get too many good things going our way."

If the New Zealanders survive the protest, they will meet Schumann - whose aim is to win an unprecedented fourth gold in four Games.

The best-of-five semifinal starts on Friday. World champion Bank meets Johannessen in the other semi. The winners sail for gold on Saturday.

Other Kiwis have fallen off the pace in the other sailing classes.

Star sailors Gavin Brady and Jamie Gale had another up-and-down day, a fifth and a second-to-last 15th holding them in ninth place halfway through. Prada tactician Torben Grael leads the fleet for Brazil.

In the dinghies, Sarah Macky is 11th in the Europe, Clifton Webb 15th in the Finn, and Laser sailor Peter Fox, who has a bad back strain, 21st.