Disappointed sailors complain of garbage-strewn course

Disappointed sailors lashed out over garbage at Rio’s Marina da Gloria, where they say floating debris cost them their chances at gold.

As Argentine veteran Santiago Lange, 54, celebrated an emotional Nacra 17 catamaran victory, Brazil’s Samuel Albrecht, who partnered Isabel Swan, was fuming over their eighth place.

“(We had) problems five times today and yesterday it had already happened as well,” Albrecht said.

“We didn’t want to talk much about the subject, but today it was really terrible, it was really dirty.

“We were in second place but we hit rubbish. I don’t know if it happened with others, but it happened to us today.”

Lange and crew Cecilia Carranza Saroli finished sixth in the medal race won by New Zealand’s Gemma Jones and Jason Saunders on Tuesday to claim the gold ahead of Australians Jason Waterhouse and Lisa Darmanin.

Swan admitted there was rubbish on the rudder of their craft, just one of the worries at a venue where bacteria in the sewage-laden waters sparked health concerns.

“We won a regatta in light wind conditions and in strong wind we got a second place. We had some bad regattas too, but we managed to get into the top 10 of the world,” she said.

“Many good people were behind us. We are really happy with the result. Today we had some incidents with garbage on the rudder, but we managed to overcome it.”