Zach Railey Still in 1st Place

ZachRailey
The RMOCR is the second stage of the ISAF Sailing World Cup.

Zach Railey (Clearwater, Fla.) said 'It was way better than yesterday, and the Finns got the best of it because the wind was building all day,' adding that his class started racing an hour earlier (12:30) than scheduled to add three races to yesterday’s single race.

The leader going into today, Railey could do nothing wrong as he methodically picked off his competition—most notably Caleb Paine (San Diego, Calif., USA) and Jonas Hogh Christensen (DEN)--to quadruple the victories in his score line today.

'In the first race, I was in a great battle with Caleb,' said Railey. 'We were two boat lengths apart from each other and on the last leg back and forth the whole time. In the second race, it was a battle up the second windward leg with Jonas, but he got separated by two boats that were on his heels--he had to concentrate on them.'

Railey said that even if he keeps doing well over five days of fleet racing, it will come down to the ten-boat medal race on Saturday to determine who takes home gold here, since only the top ten boats on the scoreboard at the end of Friday move on to that race, which counts double in the scoring. 'Even going in with the lowest points, you could gain 18 points on that day,' he said, adding that it replicates the format of the Olympics, to which he will go this summer as the USA’s Finn representative. 'Everything will be very much like here, even the 26- boat fleet.'

For Railey, a bonus will be trying to win his second Olympic medal (his first was a silver in the Finn class in 2008) alongside his sister, Paige Railey, who qualified to compete for the USA in Laser Radial class.

'It has been a dream of ours to go together since I started sailing at age eight and she started shortly after me. We fell in love with the idea of walking into Opening Ceremonies together; I don’t know if it really will sink in until we look over at each other and say, ‘we did it!’'


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