Ronja Grönblom and Veera Hokka finished 15th in the 49er FX class and did not make it to Thursday’s medal start.
31.7. 20:56•Updated 31.7. 21:37
Finland’s counter-protest in the 49er FX class of sailing has been rejected. Ronja Grönblom and Veera Hokan so the olympic career ended on wednesday.
If the counter-protest had gone through, the Finns would have advanced to the competitive medal start of the class at the Paris Olympics on Thursday.
The Finns finished 15th in the final results, when the top ten qualified for the medal start.
– It is not a big surprise that the counter-protest was not accepted. It would have required some concrete new evidence, said Urheilu’s expert Tuuli Petäjä-Sirén.
This is what the situation is all about
The exciting situation happened in the ninth start of the 49er FX class, where Grönblom and Hokka finished fourth. With this, the Finnish duo moved up to fourth in the overall standings as well.
The United States made a protest that the Finns and the Americans were on the same course and the Finns were obliged to give way.
– The Finnish boat was more on the windward side, which is why Finland was more obliged to dodge, Petäjä-Sirén explained the situation.
– It wasn’t unclear who had to dodge. There was a duty to avoid in Finland, but it was unclear whether there was a situation at all. Were we so close that the crash could have happened.
It’s also strange that it wasn’t a televised track, that is, no decent footage of the situation has been found.
Even if the data from the locators looks good to Finns, that doesn’t help either, because the jury doesn’t use the data from the locators in their decisions. So it’s mainly a word-for-word situation.
Among other things, an experienced sailor got angry about it Tapio Lehtinen Ilta-Sanom.
– It’s a shame that the possibilities of technology are not used in sailing – there have been legal murders in Olympic sailing before.
Lehtinen agreed with Petäjä-Sirén that according to the rules it is clear that Finland was obliged to avoid. However, with small changes in direction, the USA may have tacticized the situation in such a way that they have had to make a sharp evasive move and made Finland look like the culprit.
– Sailing is a gentleman’s sport. They could politely have helped the Finns dodge and in good time raised a little so that the Finns’ evasive movement would have been sufficient. This is how it would have traditionally been done. The Finns would then have thanked on the beach and said that they owed one, Lehtinen reflected in Ilta-Sanom.
The place in the medal race was in your own hands
Regardless of the protest saga, the Finns would have had a shot at a medal start if Wednesday’s sailings had gone well enough.
Grönblom and Hokka did not make it into the top ten in any start on Wednesday.
The starts of the day did not bring great success to the Finnish duo, as the wind gave them problems.
– The wind went here and there. Sometimes there were speed problems, which made it difficult to make a strategy, and sometimes we went to the wrong place. We didn’t make life easy on the track, but we fought until the end, Hokka assured.
Hokka already doubted on Tuesday that Finland’s counter-protest would not go through. He assured that he and Grönblom could focus on sailing while the Finnish background team took care of the counter-protest matter.