No Medals for Bayport Olympian Capozzi and U.S.A. Sailing Team

Bayport’s two-time Olympian Debbie Capozzi and her Womens Match Racing Team won’t be bringing home a medal from the Summer 2012 Olympic games and in two simple words team captain Anna Tunnicliffe describes the feeling:  it hurts.

The USA’s WMR trio of Capozzi, Tunnicliffe and Molly Vandermoer lost in the quarterfinals yesterday in London against Finland.

Here’s what Tunnicliffe wrote in a blog at the team’s sponsor site:

I'm sad to report that our dream of winning a gold medal for the USA ended today in a 3-1 loss to Team Finland in the quarterfinals. Despite coming out strong in the first race and winning by about 5 lengths, the second race we couldnt quite get around them on the last leg and the took the race and the series to advance to the semi finals.

It hurts! I can't describe how upset and disappointed we all feel, but we know we gave it our all. We sailed the best we could, and as a team are extremely strong. We gave these last three years everything we had and are extremely proud of where we have come. Team Finland have been amazing training partners and it was a bittersweet finish to our series as one of us got to go on and the other to go home. Unfortunaltey this time it was us that had to go home, so we are cheering hard for them to bring home the gold.

Capozzi's team continues racing today and could claim fifth place and the trio is clearly intending to make that happen.

As Tunnicliffe writes:

However, our racing here isn't finished yet. Tomorrow we get a chance to fight for fifth place in the 5-8 sail offs. We intend to hit the race course hard and finish with the best possible result we can. Yes, we are out of the medals, but our regatta isn't over and we want to finish as high as possible for Team USA. Thank you to everyone for their conitinued support.