Britain denied in Olympic saiiling races

Jo Aleh and Oliva Powrie of New Zealand won a showdown over their British rivals Friday to capture the women's 470 class of Olympic sailing. In the men's 470 medal race, postponed from Thursday due to lack of wind, Australians Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page also held off a British challenge for the gold medal. Both of the men's and women's two-person dinghy races were held on the same day after the men's medal race could not be run and they had similar themes. Aleh and Powrie were tied with Britain's Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark going into the final race and in the men's event, Belcher and Page were a mere four points in front of the British team of Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell. The men raced first, with the British boat needing to finish two places in front of the Australians to win the gold. The opposite happened. Australia finished second in the race and Britian was fourth, leaving Belcher and Page with the gold. The silver went to Page and Bithell and the bronze medal was won by Lucas Calabrese and Juan de la Fuente of Argentina. France was only three points behind Argentina for third going into the medal race, but the French boat finished eighth out of the 10 finalists while the Argentines were third. With New Zealand and Argentina tied going into the medal race of the women's event, it was just a matter of which one could get to the finish line first on Friday. That turned out to be the New Zealanders, who won the medal race while Britain finished ninth. The British team settled for the silver medal. Lisa Westerhof and Lobke Berkhout of the Netherlands took the bronze.