Murphy, going for gold, is used to bucking trends

ANALYSIS:Sailor Annalise Murphy surprised pundits at Weymouth last week, with fine boat-handling as well as a height advantage carrying her into today's top-10 race

THEY’RE CALLING her “The Irish Lever”. At 6ft 1in, Annalise Murphy is certainly the tallest in her 41-boat fleet. It’s an advantage she used to maximum effect last week in breezy conditions to stun her Laser Radial class and become the talk of the Olympic sailing centre, the UK’s renowned big wind venue at Weymouth in Dorset.

Despite the performance, some British yachting pundits say the wins are purely down to her larger frame, refusing to rate Ireland’s “breeze queen” as a sailor who can do it across the wind range.

But that was a week ago. This morning the National Yacht Club sailor has gold within her grasp and is preparing for the most important yacht race Ireland has ever sailed. It’s all thanks to some skilful sailing in lighter winds encountered in the latter part of the series, confounding critics in the process.

On Saturday Murphy posted the best Olympic sailing result for Ireland in 32 years after the final fleet races of the Laser Radial class, eclipsing her mother Cathy MacAleavey who sailed at Busan in the 1988 Olympics.

There is no doubt winds have blown in Murphy’s favour, but she has risen to the challenge and taken on a range of conditions.

She has racked up a lot of race wins in the 2012 season but, until now, consistency had deserted her.

And although she has steered clear of trouble all week, it has been far from smooth sailing.

On Saturday, in the penultimate race, she avoided a “sudden death” starting line penalty that disqualified near rival and British hope Alison Young.

Only in race six did Annalise drop into the teens of her 41-boat fleet, and that was a strange race where five of her near rivals also discarded the result.

Now Murphy is in bronze medal position, with gold in striking distance this lunchtime. Only a single point separates the top four boats, and she cannot finish worse than fifth overall.

Ireland’s only sailing medal came at the 1980 Moscow Olympics when 62 countries decided to boycott the games. It’s not popular to mention that, or that since then Ireland has not had a top-eight finish.

It’s a remarkable achievement, but those close to Murphy know this is a sailor used to bucking trends.

The Irishwoman stands more than 6ft tall and weighs 72kg. Compare that to one of her main rivals for the gold, the Dutch world champion Marit Bouwmeester, who, at 5ft 10in, is 65kg. China’s Lijia Xu, who sailed into contention on Saturday, is 5ft 9in and 60kg.

Both are a more typical size for the Laser Radial boat.

A centimetre or two in height makes big differences to performance because it puts body weight further outboard to counteract the pressure of wind on sail and drive the boat forward. Dinghy sailing demands a lot of agility and the constant movement of a sailor’s body weight.

The approach is for sailors to be an optimum size so they can best deal with the different wind conditions without disadvantage.

In any given series, a mix of both light and strong winds can usually be expected over a week – except, it appears, in Weymouth where, so far, there has only been strong or moderate winds.

For two days in high winds, Murphy’s natural advantage in height and weight, combined with a fine display of boat-handling skills, produced 100m leads, quite literally leaving the Olympic fleet in her wake. Blasting off the start line, she destroyed the silver and bronze medallists from Beijing, the former having been crowned 2012 world champion.

Yacht races develop slowly, competitors travelling at speeds no faster than a jogger. Racing looks confusing and sometimes it’s not even clear to pundits what boat leads. But thanks to modern broadcasting last week, Murphy left TV audiences in no doubt as to what was happening.

While many asked how was it was possible for a 22-year-old debutant to produce such results, insiders already knew her world-class strengths would make the difference if Weymouth delivered its famous winds.

In a short time, Murphy has carved out a niche for herself as the heavy-weather specialist of her class. She has twice taken bronze at pre-Olympic events in Weymouth, so when competitors saw the forecast for near gale-force winds last Monday, there was a sense of inevitability in the fleet. Yet few contemplated the scale of the victories.

But this is a driven girl well blooded in international competition. She showed the depth of her ambition when transitioning successfully from youth to senior, too.

At her first worlds in 2007, Murphy was silver fleet; two years later she finished eighth at the World Championships and she went on to better that again in 2011, finishing sixth at the 2011 Perth worlds.

Her transition has not been without its ups and downs, but that is not unexpected with an emerging talent.

In 2011, she set an almost impossibly high bar to replicate, only finishing outside the top 10 once at a World Cup regatta. After a long 2011 season, Murphy struggled to regain some of this international form, a worrying period for her.

You have to go back a long way in sailing’s history books to find a set of results equal to last week’s, and never by a debutant. Only two of the most famous names in world sailing come to mind: the greatest sailor of all time, Paul Elvstrøm of Denmark, did it in 1956, as did Britain’s multiple gold medallist Rodney Pattisson in 1968.

Today’s forecast is for lighter winds than the past week, but Annalise will take huge confidence this morning in having medalled at the Weymouth venue twice before. Before the Olympics the belief was that if she could even make today’s top-10 medal race it would be a fantastic achievement. This lunchtime, a young woman used to bucking trends is sailing for Olympic gold.

David O’Brien is editor of Afloat magazine

OVERALL WINNER HOW IT WORKS   

ANNALISE MURPHY does not have to win the medal race today to win a medal, but if she beats any one of China's Lijia Xu, Belgium's Evi Van Acker or Marit Boumeester of the Netherlands she will win a medal. If she beats them all she will win gold.

Murphy can also lose out on a medal today, but she can finish no worse than fifth overall, which would be Ireland's best Olympic sailing result since 1980.

Ireland is at the centre of a thrilling climax in an Olympic sailing final for the first time, and it is also one rarely seen as close on points. Only a single point separates the top four boats in the 10-boat final.

The leaders built a cushion of points on the other six competitors from the 10 races sailed over the past week. The overall winner will be the sailor with the fewest aggregate points across the fleet races and today's double points medal race final.

After each race participants are given points depending on their finishing position (not time). The winner gets one point, the second place gets two points and so on.

Annalise is currently joint third on 34 points with Van Acker.

The lead is held jointly by Xu and world champion Boumeester, both of them on 33 points.