Jessica deserves a medal - especially after going so close and for so long.
She has windsurfed at the highest level from the one design Windsurfer days through to 'pro' wavesailing to whatever the latest metamorphis this Olympics has brought to windsurfing - however foreign it is.....
Also a big well done to Glen Ashby, who picked up silver in the Tornado class. Glen also windsurfs, or he used to when Lake Eppalock had water in it and he was back home from international regattas, and he is a damm good windsurfer.
I was stoked to see Jessica Crisp at the top!!! congrats to her, also to the other old know names from the PBA gilrs fleet as Alessandra Sensini and Barbara Kendall that also are on top of RSX
That Chinese girl is a machine btw. Apparently in the RSX Worlds in NZ last January she sailed the entire Medal Race with no harness-lines, because her coach told her to take them off!!
This is not that dumb, I believe in that technique. I've sailed mostly without my entire life including freestyle, waves, and practicing racing. Exception was the upwind legs during actual races.
Nope, very small biceps indeed, and 170 pounds after a couple of tinnies.
If you'd try, you may find it's not the biceps that give, it's the shoulders and the forearms. You outta try to unhook for a couple of meters.
Many of the types in Hawaii in the early days were sailing without. As a matter of fact one of them was advertised in this very forum, a couple of naked sheilas. Plus in my racing days it was usual practice to try no harness, gives one endurance.
Anyways, you're missing the point. Transitions (gybes and sometimes tacks) are a rest. Freestyle allows to rest, so does sailing front-to-back, pushing the rig for various freestyle moves, helitacks and all that. And you can't jump waves hooked in all the time - not safe. I never sail long reaches, I find them super-boring anyways. Just freestyle and gybe often and you're OK.
No I couldn't sail forever on a long reach in strong winds all day.
My son (13yo and around 125 pounds, before beer) started freestyling on the Exocet and since then doesn't hook in much anymore. Try it.
just that i haven't met a lot of harnessless claimers and if you sail heaps without a harness and boast about it then you are ready to to be inducted into the harnessless windsurfers hall of fame along with bruce kendall, chris lawrence....etc.
