Yachting: Olympic Finn selection race becomes even tighter

1.00pm

New Zealand's three contenders for selection in the Olympic Finn yachting event were today virtually neck-and-neck just past the halfway stage of their final trial.

Dean Barker, Clifton Webb and Peter Fox were sixth, seventh and eighth overall respectively after five of the nine races in the Finn European championship in France.

Just three points separate the trio in what is the second of two trials.

Fox had the best finish of the New Zealand contingent in the day's two races off La Rochelle, with a sixth placing.

Heading into the present regatta, Barker had the advantage over Fox and Webb in the battle for the berth for Athens.

He had the best result of the three in the first selection trial, the Princess Sofia regatta in Spain last month.

At the Yngling world championship in Spain, Sharon Ferris and her crew maintained their sixth spot on the points table after placings of 19th and seventh today.

Ferris and fellow skipper Alesha Thorpe are trying to qualify New Zealand for a spot in Athens in the three-woman keelboat class.

They are also battling each other for the right to be selected if New Zealand does qualify.

Thorpe and her crew lay 17th overall after their latest placings of 30th and sixth off Santander.

At the 470 world championships in Croatia, Melinda Henshaw and Jan Shearer's hopes of Olympic selection suffered a double setback that saw them fall to 43rd overall.

They managed only 26th in their sole outing today and also had a good result from one of yesterday's races erased in a protest.

What had been a fifth placing became a disqualification after an American crew protested that the New Zealanders had tacked in front of them before a top mark.

With no witnesses to the incident, the protest was upheld.

Henshaw and Shearer won the national trials off Auckland in January, but they were told they still had to convince the selectors they could finish in the top 10 at the Olympics.

Their position on the points table after six races at Zadar means they have been relegated to the second-tier silver fleet for the remainder of the regatta.

Shelley Hesson and Linda Dickson, who still have an outside chance of pipping Henshaw and Shearer for Athens, climbed to 24th overall after a 10th placing today to qualify for the gold fleet.

Abandonment in the men's 470 races meant no results were posted today. Brothers Stephen and Phillip Keen are the best of the New Zealand contingent at 28th overall.

- NZPA