COURTESY PHOTO | Meb Keflezighi, winner of the Boston Marathon, the night before his historic victory with Liam Adipietro.
The next race for the winner of the Boston Marathon will be run along the streets and roads of Shelter Island.
Meb Keflezighi, who ran an historic race in Boston Monday, becoming the first American man in almost 30 years to win the most famous footrace race in the world, had already accepted an invitation to run in the Shelter Island 10K on June 21. (more…)
REPORTER FILE PHOTO
Then Dory restaurant and bar proprietor Richard Edwards (center) was one of many Island residents who aired complaints at a March 1984 Town Board meeting about what some said was overly aggressive actions by police during DWI stops.
50 YEARS AGO
Clark wins first indoor track meet
Cliff Clark — yes, that Cliff Clark, now president of South Ferry — then a Harding College sophomore and cross-country whiz, won a two-mile race, reeling off a 9:53 effort. It was Mr. Clark’s first indoor track competition. (more…)
COURTESY PHOTO | Shelter Island sailor Amanda Clark, background, finished ninth overall in the Women’s 470 competition at the 2012 London Olympics.
After eight days and 11 races through the waters off the south coast of England, Shelter Island’s Amanda Clark and crew Sarah Lihan concluded their 2012 Olympic competition Friday with a last-place finish in the medal race and 9th place out of 20 boats from around the world that competed in the women’s 470 two-person dinghy class.
A two-time Olympian, Clark topped her finish from Beijing in 2008, when she was 12th.
Referring to her previous crew Sarah Chin’s decision to give up competition in early 2011, not long before Olympic qualifiers were to begin, Ms. Clark commented Friday, “What motivated me to keep going in 2011 is that I love sailing. I really enjoy being part of the Olympic experience. I am so happy to be part of this and on this side of it. It’s been a great experience and definitely glad I didn’t stop in 2011.”
New Zealand’s Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie won the overall Olympic women’s 470 competition as well as the medal race. They had a net total of 35 points. It was the third race they had won of the 11. They were second in three races.
Great Britain won the silver medal and Netherlands won the bronze.
“Our medal race was unfortunately not as breezy as the men had,” commented Lihan. “We had a lot of pressure coming in and out. When the pressure was in, the left was the favored side of the course, and when it was out, the right was favored. We didn’t line ourselves up with those trends and our scores reflect that.”
“Today when we saw the Brits with their double flares and the Kiwis upside down, and everyone celebrating, Amanda and I were pretty down, to be honest,” said Lihan. “I looked down and saw the Olympic rings on our pinnies and thought, ‘I represented the United States of America at the Olympics.’ I’m really disappointed with how we performed. I really wish we were able to get up on that podium and watch our flag raise — but we’re here and we did it.”
In the medal race on Friday, Clark and Lihan’s last-place finish added 20 points to their score for a net total of 98. The top 10 boats competed in Friday’s medal race — the 11th race of the competition, which began Aug. 3. In a medal race, points are doubled, so a 10th-place finish meant 20 points. The boat with the lowest point total was the winner of the overall competition.
Clark and Lihan teamed up in 2011 and quickly saw their results improve, collecting medals at world cup events. They qualified for the Olympics on the final day of the 2011 World Championships in Perth in December. In a final World Cup pre-Olympic event that was held off Weymouth in June, they won the medal race and placed second overall, moving up from sixth place, and took home silver medals — but not the Olympic kind.
Clark announced in March in an appearance at the Shelter Island School that this would be her last Olympic competition. She said she hoped to continue to work with the U.S. Olympic Sailing Team in some capacity to share her knowledge and experience.
COURTESY PHOTO | Amanda Clark, background, and her crew Sarah Lihan are in seventh place heading into the final two preliminary races Wednesday.
They’re moving on up.
Shelter Island Olympian Amanda Clark and her Team Go Sail partner, Sarah Lihan, posted a pair of top 10 finishes in the Women’s 470 Tuesday to move up to seventh place overall with 73 points in the event. The top 10 sailing teams following the final two preliminary races tomorrow will qualify for the medal race Friday.
After all 10 races are finished, the worst score is thrown out, giving each team a final net points total. Because Team Go Sail finished in last place in Race 6, they will definitely see 20 points dropped from their final score. Currently, that would place them in a tie with fifth place Brazil (67 total points) and sixth place Germany (72 total points), with 53 net points apiece.
On Tuesday, Team Go Sail placed third in Race 8 and ninth in Race 9. That moved them up from eight place overall.
Races are slated Wednesday at 7 a.m. and 8:15 a.m. and can be viewed at www.nbcolympics.com. Results will be posted on the Reporter website at www.sireporter.com as soon as they are available.
Women’s 470 Standings
| Rk | Points | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOT | Net | ||||||||||||||
| 1 |  |
31 | 21 | ||||||||||||
| 2 |  |
31 | 25 | ||||||||||||
| 3 |  |
46 | 28 | ||||||||||||
| 4 |  |
64 | 47 | ||||||||||||
| 5 |  |
67 | 53 | ||||||||||||
| 6 |  |
72 | 53 | ||||||||||||
| 7 |  |
73 | 53 | ||||||||||||
| 8 |  |
75 | 57 | ||||||||||||
| 9 |  |
84 | 63 | ||||||||||||
| 10 |  |
89 | 70 | ||||||||||||
| 11 |  |
89 | 73 | ||||||||||||
| 12 |  |
98 | 77 | ||||||||||||
| 13 |  |
98 | 78 | ||||||||||||
| 14 |  |
100 | 81 | ||||||||||||
| 15 |  |
103 | 83 | ||||||||||||
| 16 |  |
99 | 83 | ||||||||||||
| 17 |  |
104 | 85 | ||||||||||||
| 18 |  |
111 | 92 | ||||||||||||
| 19 |  |
113 | 96 | ||||||||||||
| 20 |  |
135 | 115 | ||||||||||||
COURTESY PHOTO | Shelter Island’s own Amanda Clark, background, is now through six of 10 races in the 2012 Olympics.
Despite a disappointing day in the Women’s 470 Olympic competition Sunday, Shelter Islander Amanda Clark and her crew, Sarah Lihan, want fans to know they’re still in the game and optimistic about making the medal race on Friday.
The sailing duo, which goes by the name Team Go Sail, dropped from fourth place overall to eighth place based on their 19th and 20th place finishes in races five and six Sunday. After a day off today, they will resume their quest to reach the medal race with two more races Tuesday.
“[Team Go Sail] had a rough day yesterday but we are taking the lay day to get our heads straight to fight through til the end,” they wrote on their Facebook page Monday. “Four more races and a medal race, we are very much still in this. Game on.”
In an interview with Dana Paxton, a spokesperson for the U.S. Sailing Team, the pair said there was “dying breeze” on the North Course that created very difficult conditions and forced the sailing committee to change the length of the course.
“It wasn’t conditions that suit their powerful sailing,” Ms. Paxton said.
Ms. Lihan elaborated further.
“The first race was in decent pressure, but it was dying the whole way through,” Ms. Lihan told Ms. Paxton. “We had a game plan to go left. There was a big cloud on the right side that we thought was going to kill the breeze. We got a persistent righty with more pressure than we had on the left side. We executed our game plan, but unfortunately it was incorrect. That put us back. It was difficult to gain places back the rest of the race because as the breeze died, there weren’t any lanes to pass. It wasn’t a speed issue, there just weren’t any lanes and not tactical gain to get around. And they shortened the course.”
Ms. Clark told Ms. Paxton that the day off Monday should help the sailors regroup.
“We are lucky to have some time to decompress,” Ms. Clark said. “We are going to have more of these days with four-lap races and on the Harbour Course, we have to change gears and get back on track. I believe we are capable of doing it and I don’t see today as foreshadowing of how the rest of the event will go.”
The 10-race series concludes with races 9 and 10 on Wednesday.
The team must be in the top 10 of the event standings after Race 10 Wednesday to qualify for the medal race on Friday.
Team Go Sail is nine points ahead of 11th place Japan, currently the top team out of the medal race. The Americans are now 20 points behind third place the Netherlands for the bronze position.
In Olympic sailing, points are awarded based on how you finish. Finish first, you’re awarded one point. Come in second, you score two points, etc. Each team’s worse race is thrown out before the medal round. The team with the lowest point total at the end of the medal race, when points double, is the winner.
Races can be viewed live at www.nbcolympics.com and results will be posted as soon as they’re available at www.sireporter.com.