McHardie and McKenzie slipped into the bronze-medal position after finishing the race in ninth.
“We’re gutted with how we ended up today - we came into it with the hopes of getting gold but, unfortunately, it wasn’t quite our day,” McKenzie said.
“We are super happy for Logan and Oscar to take out the win and pretty stoked to have two Kiwis on the podium. So, overall, we’re gutted from today but happy with how the week’s gone.”
Australians Tom Burton and Max Paul took silver – ensuring an all-Australasian podium.
“It’s probably a coincidence that the Kiwis and Aussies have done well here because we haven’t done much training with them in recent years,” Dunning Beck said.
“But it’s good to see, and it reminds me of the days when [former Australian 49er sailors] Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen, and Peter Burling and Blair Tuke were fighting it out at the top of the 49er fleet. It’s nice to think we could get back to that again.”
The final act in the ILCA 7 competition also delivered a mix of elation and heartbreak for the Kiwis – with George Gautrey stunning the rest of the fleet by winning the medal race to claim silver and Tom Saunders dropping out of contention after a false start. A left-field strategy – quite literally – paid off, Gautrey explained.
“I thought it was a bit of a left-hand track, so I just wanted to get into the race and be the leftmost boat,” he said. “You go into these things with the perfect strategy laid out in your head and today I got the start I needed, and it all came together at the right time.”
Former world champion Saunders, who lined up for the race in the silver-medal position, picked up an OCS for being over at the start line prematurely. Forced to circle back and re-start, Saunders managed to catch up with the back of the fleet but could only finish eighth for an overall fifth place – a single point off the bronze.
While disappointed for his teammate, Gautrey – who started the race nine points outside of medal territory - said Saunders’ misfortune helped his cause.
“At that stage, I knew … that winning the race would be my best chance of moving up. Some of the other guys did some betting for me and got a few of the boys to the back of the fleet where I needed them to be.” While it’s one of the biggest results of his career, 25-year-old Gautrey knows there is plenty of room for improvement.
“Things don’t always go your way, so you have to take it when it does. The result was good but this week highlighted for me that I’ve still got some areas to tidy up in my game,” he said.
“It’s been a pretty rough couple of years for me and this is a bit of a validation of the work I’ve been doing over the past couple of months and of the faith Yachting New Zealand and others have put in me, that I can still get decent results.”
Veerle ten Have bagged New Zealand’s second bronze of the regatta – finishing behind Britain’s Emma Wilson and Lucie Belbeoch from France in the women’s iQFOIL (windfoil) three-board gold-medal race.
Fellow Kiwi boarder Josh Armit was a whisker away from the same colour in the men’s competition but had to settle for fourth after missing a spot in the gold-medal race to Sam Sills, Sebastian Koerdel and Tom Reuveny.
“Naturally I’m a bit disappointed not being able to get a medal but at least it was great to get some more experience in medal series racing,” Armit said.
