Haegar/Provencha and McNay/Hughes offer by far the US Sailing Team Sperry’s most solid medal hopes for Rio 2016, and with both duos performing exceedingly well over the past year, even gold is within reach this August. But more than halfway through the Argentina Worlds (the first selection series for the American mens’ and womens’ 470 teams), neither team has quite found their form. Stu and Dave lie just inside the medal race cutoff at 10, and Annie and Brie sit in 6th place, 3 back from the peaking past SCOTW Sydney Bolger with crew Carly Shevitz. The big story is just how impossibly clogged the racing area is with massive, moving islands of vegetation pouring out the river mouth. Supercoach Morgan Reeser reports (with thanks to Morgs for the shot of the Greek team soft aground):
Weeds continue to dominate the 470 Worlds. In race 6 today, the 5th overall placed Greek team became mired in a maze of weed so thick on the first beat that they could not find a way out, so they retired from the race. We had three races today, but were forced to move course areas for each race because of the weeds eventually took over the course area. Each course area move about a 3 mile change of venue.
I will never complain about a little bit of kelp again.
