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Railey Still Second In Sailing

The Associated Press

U.S. sailor Zach Railey sails during race seven of the Finn dinghy class sailing competition of the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Qingdao, about 720 kilometers southeast of Beijing.

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The Associated Press

Published: August 14, 2008

QINGDAO, China - British star Ben Ainslie took second in Wednesday's Finn class Olympic sailing to gain a six-point overall lead on Clearwater's Zach Railey with such light winds that some sailors languished in the heat as they waited out race delays and postponements.

Ainslie, who has two gold and one silver Olympic sailing medals, is the undisputed favorite in the Finn class, but has faced an unexpectedly tough challenge from world-ranked No. 11 Railey.

The 31-year-old Briton climbed back from seventh place after the first leg to trail Croatia's Ivan Kljakovic-Gaspic the rest of the way to the Croat's first win in the Games. Ainslie finished 2 minutes, 6 seconds behind, with Sweden's Daniel Birgmark third.

Railey, 21, also gained on the fleet after being down as far as 14th or 15th place in the 26-boat fleet.

"I was really fortunate to get seventh in that race. I was sixth or seventh at the first windward mark, and just had a disastrous downwind ... at the bottom mark I was 15 or something like that. It all went wrong," Railey said.

Railey did something that is usually not part of his strategy: He took a chance.

"I just had to calm myself down on the second upwind, and went out to the right of the fleet and I got some wind pressure and was able to get back. ... I had to do something to get back into the race," he said.

After seven races in the 11-race series, Ainslie leads with 19 points, six points ahead of Railey with 25, and 11 ahead of Guillaume Florent of France, who was fourth Wednesday.

JAMES BLAKE: The good news for Tampa's James Blake is he defeated Gilles Simon of France 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the men's quarterfinals. The bad news is he has to play Roger Federer today.

Federer avenged a defeat four years ago at the Olympics by beating Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-6 (4).

Blake, the lone U.S. male to survive the first round of singles, is 0-8 against Federer and has won only one of their 22 sets.

"If he's too good for me, he's too good for me," Blake said. "Every time at the beginning of each match, I've felt like I could come out on top."

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