Chafee falls short of medal in Rio

By Jacob Marrocco
Posted 8/18/16

Warwick's Louisa Chafee was unable to make it on the podium in Rio, but her final performance in the Nacra 17 medal race on Tuesday afternoon was one to remember. She and her skipper, Bora Gulari, overcame a

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Chafee falls short of medal in Rio

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Warwick’s Louisa Chafee was unable to make it on the podium in Rio, but her final performance in the Nacra 17 medal race on Tuesday afternoon was one to remember.

She and her skipper, Bora Gulari, overcame a couple of errors on the water to storm back for a fourth-place finish in the medal regatta. However, the duo entered the race in ninth place overall, and the point deficit was too much to make up. Chafee and Gulari earned eighth out of 20 total teams.

On the second leg of the race, Chafee and Gulari had dropped out of the top five boats. In the final stretch, though, they surged ahead of eventual gold medalist Argentina, which was penalized twice, to claim fourth overall. The U.S. finished behind New Zealand, Australia (silver) and Austria (bronze).

"Basically Bora did some great tactical work getting us back in the race after a mediocre start, and I did my job of keeping the boat ripping along," Chafee said in a text message on Wednesday night. "The wind was awesome, and we were just so pumped to be in the medal race. We knew we were capable of a top 5 finish in the medal race, so it was great to make it happen."

Equipment issues in Races 3 and 6 resulted in last-place finishes for the USA representatives, hurting their overall points total.

Chafee and Gulari didn’t crack the top-four teams until Race 5 of the 12 preliminaries, where they finished fourth. The two earned strong finishes in Race 8 and Race 12 as well, crossing the line in second and third, respectively, to grab the No. 9 seed for the final race.

However, at just 24, Chafee could find herself rising to the podium one day. The eighth-place finish isn’t a bad start for the sailor who only began pursuing Nacra sailing a few years ago.

Edit: This story was update with a quote from Louisa Chafee at 7:34 p.m. on Aug. 18.

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