Youth Olympic Sailing: Audrey Yong clinches Bic Techno 293 bronze medal after tight contest

Story by Erwin Wong/Red Sports. Photos by Vanessa Lim/Red Sports

National Sailing Centre, Wednesday, August 25, 2010 — 15-year-old Audrey Yong repeated her bronze medal feat at last year’s Asian Youth Games when she came in third overall in the girls’ Bic Techno 293 category at the Youth Olympic Games sailing competition.

Audrey entered today’s medal race in fifth place, but with every chance of snaring a silver or bronze. Thailand’s Kaewduang-Ngam Siripon was the runaway leader with 18 points after 10 races and one discard. Audrey was fifth with 40 points, but strongly entrenched in a pack that had Italy’s Veronica Fanciulli (38), Israel’s Naomi Cohen (38), Argentina’s Valentina Serigos (38) and Spain’s Lara Lagoa (41).

The medal race is non-discardable, and will be added to the scores for the final placings. Unlike at the Summer Olympics, where race points count for double (first place gets two points, second place gets four, and so on), the scoring system for the medal race at the YOG is as per normal races.

Thus a podium finish was up for grabs, and Audrey kept herself within the leading group for much of the race, and finished third eventually. Fanciulli won the race to clinch the silver medal, but none of Audrey’s rivals in that lead pack finished higher than fifth.

This meant that the Mayflower Secondary School student finished the competition third with 43 points, three fewer of Cohen and Lagoa. Serigos finished with 47.

Audrey’s bronze medal was Singapore’s sixth overall of the Games, with the others coming from Swimming (silver), Table tennis (silver), Taekwondo (two bronzes), and Archery (bronze).

Audrey’s teammate, Natasha Yokoyama, finished her girls’ Byte CII campaign strongly by placing third in the medal race. She had won races six and 10, but positions of 23, 20, 20 and 12 throughout the competition put her out of realistic medal contention coming into the final race.

She placed fifth overall in the event.

Double Byte CII world champion and AYG winner Darren Choy had a forgettable ending to his YOG campaign. He led the fleet after eight races but registered finishes of 15th, 13th and 18th in the respective races which followed to fall back into sixth place.

A good result was needed for Darren to sneak into a podium finish, but he trailed at the tail end of the 29-strong fleet before finishing well in 12th. He was 16 points from winning a medal and even dropped a position to seventh in the overall fleet rankings.

Final results
Girls Bic Techno 293 (after 11 races)
1 Kaewduang-Ngam Siripon (Thailand) 22 points (1 discard)
2 Veronica Fanciulli (Italy) 39
3 AUDREY YONG (SINGAPORE) 43
4 Naomi Cohen (Israel) 46
5 Lara Lagoa (Spain) 46

Boys Byte CII (after 12 races)
1 Ian Burrows (U.S. Virgin Islands) 44 points (2 discards)
2 Florian Haufe (Germany) 60
3 Just van Aanholt (Netherlands Antilles) 62
4 Kaarle Tapper (Finland) 66
5 Pavlo Babych (Ukraine) 72
7 DARREN CHOY (SINGAPORE) 78

Girls Byte CII (after 12 races)
1 Lara Vadlau (Austria) 27 points (2 discards)
2 Daphne van der Vaart (Netherlands) 41
3 Constanze Stolz (Germany) 57
4 Celine Carlsen (Denmark) 58
5 NATASHA YOKOYAMA (SINGAPORE) 66