Kontides wins first race of sailing day 2

Pavlos Kontides made an impressive start on the second day of the sailing competition at the Rio Olympics on Tuesday, winning the first race of the day in the laser class.

The result more than made up for his terrible performance in Monday’s second race when he finished 31st.

Tuesday’s second race saw the Limassol born sailor finish 14th taking him to fifth place in the overall standings after four races. He now stands 22 penalty points behind Argentinian Julio Alsogaray with 7 penalty points, Croatian Tonci Stipanovic, 13, New Zealander Sam Meech, 14 and Australian Tom Burton 20.

His performance raised hopes of him winning an Olympic medal as he did four years ago in London with a silver, making him the first ever Cypriot to do so.

Windsurfer Andreas Cariolou moved up the overall standings to tenth place from Monday’s 15th after finishing 23rd in the fourth race, 10th in the fifth and sixth in the sixth.

It is the fourth time Cariolou has represented Cyprus at the Olympics having accomplished thirteenth-place finishes at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, and at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, but failing to qualify into the medal race.

At the London Olympics, he improved further in the men’s event, but suffered a disastrous performance in his sixth race, which affected his position in the overall rankings, ultimately finishing up in seventeenth place.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.