Eve McMahon will be the sole Irish contender for a medal result on the final day of competition at the Princess Sofia Trophy for Olympic classes in Palma on Saturday morning.
She has a strong chance of retaining her podium standing after an eventful penultimate day saw her move from bronze to gold and finally back to silver medal position.
After a two-hour delay waiting for wind, mercifully the fleet was held ashore unlike the gruelling six- to eight-hour afloat sessions that hallmarked the early part of the regatta.
At last, the breeze arrived into the Bay of Palma from the direction of Magaluf and a welcome respite from the chilly northerly winds that added to the grunt of the first four days.
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McMahon rose to the challenge of her 50-boat Gold fleet and scored a second place which bumped her back into first place. A third place followed and she was all set to consolidate her dominance going into the final race.
And then the shock.
In a tactic normally expected in a final race, Britain’s Daisy Collingridge engaged McMahon in a match-race duel that took the pair well down the pack to mid-fleet.
The upshot of the move after some maths involving discard scores was that Collingridge ousted the Irish sailor from first place into second overall by a five-point margin.
“I guess that’s the start of the battle,” admitted McMahon after racing ended. “I’ve trained with her and know all of her strengths and weaknesses and vice versa, so it’s going to be a good battle.”
Nevertheless, a match-race was definitely not on the radar for this stage of the event and McMahon was caught off-guard, a point echoed by her Slovenian double-Olympic medallist coach Vasilij Zbogar.
“Going into the last race, she said ‘I just want to enjoy it’ but the British girl attacked her. We didn’t plan for it and lost a few points there,” said Zbogar. “Everything is still open and we’ll be more prepared.”
In a change to the format for the Sailing Grand Slam series, the traditional medal race has switched to a double-race final series rather than a high-scoring single race.
The top 10 boats go through with scores adjusted to ensure that any of the 10 could mathematically feature on the podium.
Collingridge and McMahon have a reasonable points cushion and top five results in both races could see a podium place.
Meanwhile, McMahon’s older brother Ewan missed a place in his men’s event final after a mixed day, an outcome for the event that he described as “bittersweet”. Having been in 11th place going into the final three races of the Gold fleet series, a 19th and a 20th saddled his results and he dropped three places.
