Goodison takes positives from Weymouth

Eurosport - Sat, 19 Sep 12:08:00 2009

Olympic gold medallist Paul Goodison is adamant he can take plenty of positives from his performance at Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta in Weymouth, despite missing out on a fourth consecutive gold medal.

SAILING Great Britain Laser sailor Paul Goodison - 0

The 31-year-old, who has captured the world and European titles this season, is battling it out for second place with Australia's Tom Slingsby certain to top the podium, having notched up five victories.

Goodison took victory in Friday's race but currently lies fifth while Nick Thompson has already been crowned the overall World Cup champion.

But with the London 2012 sailing competition also set to be held in Weymouth, Goodison is adamant he is not wasting his time on the south coast.

"This week has been about learning more about the conditions for London 2012 and I have learnt some lessons this week to take forward.

"It's not always about winning although it's nice and I have got a lot of positives to take from the week.

"I've learnt a lot this week and it's great to race on the Olympic waters, you can gauge a lot more about the conditions when you are racing 100 people rather than training with four.

"There is a really strong fleet here, a lot of competitors have come here but the only problem with having the regatta a couple of weeks after a major world competition is that there is only a couple of people who are really up for it, mostly those who didn't do as well at the Worlds as they would have liked!

"Coming back from Beijing I didn't think it was going to get any better than that, but the targets I set myself for the year were to win the European Championships for the fifth time and to become World Champion, so it has been a fantastic year for me so it's about time I get to relax and have some time off for a while."

Meanwhile, Britain's Paralympic sailors set the tone for a succesful weekend with two medals on Friday.

John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas scooped silver in the Sonar class while Alex Rickham and Niki Birrell grabbed silver in the Skud-18 class.

Ed Wright will be hoping to go one better than that in the Finn medal race tomorrow and currently lies second behind European champion Ivan Kljakovic-Gaspic.

Bryony Shaw is also a shoe-in for a medal in the RSX class, lying second behind Spain's Blanca Manchon with just the medal race remaining tomorrow.

The British men's 470 crews will be in the mix for medals with Nic Asher and Elliot Willis second, Stuart Bithell and Luke Patience third and Pom Green and Nick Rogers sixth with just the medal race remaining.

But perhaps Britain's best chance of gold comes in the Star class with Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson sitting on top of the pile with three races to go.

More than the Games / Eurosport

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