Left to right: Daniel Birgmark and Balazs Hajdu; Jonas Hoegh Christensen, Chris Cook and Balazs Hajdu go golfing; Guillaume Florent, Balazs Hajdu and Gasper Vincec. Click on images for larger versions.

JULY 23 - The other face of Qingdao

Despite long-held predictions of almost guaranteed light winds at the Olympic regatta, the waters off Qingdao have another face. After a prolonged period of fog and very light winds, these photos show a completely different side to the Olympic venue, with the 2004 Finn silver medalist Rafael Trujillo (ESP) training this week in winds of 22-25 knots.

His coach, Michele Marchesini (ITA), who competed against Trujillo in the 2004 Olympics writes from Qingdao, "In the last two days the wind has broken through in Qingdao. Yesterday we experienced 20 knot winds, today it was up to 22-25. In the fresh winds, some nice waves quickly build up, especially when the wind is blowing against the tidal flow."

He also reports that the 'green carpet' is returning to cause further problems. "For two days, the difficult conditions have forced the Chinese navy, fishermen and volunteers picking the algae out of the water to remain onshore. The green problem is now back."

The increased wind also produced some new sailing problems. "When planing down waves and the bow dives through a weed patch, boatspeed decreases even quicker than usual with all this green stuff flying out of the way. It is also quite interesting to see how, as everybody lost quite few kilos for racing here with the expected light winds, differences in speed in the breeze are bigger."