Windsurfer Women - Mistral

http://www.mundovela.com/inicio/ing/inicio/inicio.html
September 21, 2003

History has been made. Lee KORSITZ (ISR) has won the 2003 World 
Mistral Championship, and in doing so has not only qualified 
Israel for the 2004 Olympic Games, but has also made history.

She has become the first woman from Israel to ever win a World 
Championship in any sport. Lee is totally overcome with her 
victory and it certainly hasn’t sunk in.

However, it was close, as Lee was being chased hard throughout 
the race by Barbara, with the Gold only ever going to be decided 
between these two.

Lee knew she needed to either finish in the top 6 to automatically 
claim Gold, or she could finish lower down, but she then needed 
a significant margin between her and Barbara to taste victory. 
But that victory was almost Barbara’s. At the first windward, 
Lee was 23, with Barbara 35, a place Lee still held at the 
leeward mark, but Barbara had made up four places to 35. 
Had the race finished at this point, the Gold medal would have 
been Barbara’s. With both sailors’ pushing hard, they both 
managed to improve their positions over the remainder of the race, 
with Lee passing seven more sailors to finish in 17, and Barbara 
moving through to be in 27 place. Only a point separated them at 
the finish.

Barbara commented afterwards, ”It was a bad race. I blew it.” 
A past World Champion and multi-Olympic medallist, Barbara is the 
oldest sailor in the fleet at 36, but has many years in her yet. 
As she commented earlier in the week, ”There isn’t anything else 
I enjoy doing more.” Here also to celebrate Barbara’s success 
was her two year old daughter.

Whilst these two were battling for the Gold and Silver, Faustine 
MERRET (FRA) put in an excellent result of four to just snatch 
the Bronze from Jessica CRISP (AUS), who took the bullet in 
today’s race.

Lee, who has only started competing on the international circuit 
in the past eighteen months had a dream coming into this 
Championship, ”My dream was to hear my national anthem. Before I 
left my mother packed a flag in my bag, and I had forgotten 
about it until today. I didn’t know I was going to be World 
Champion. I was really nervous as the race was postponed.”

However, her training partner and Bronze medallist in the men’s 
event, Gal FRIDMAN (ISR) commented, ”I knew she could do it.”

The pair will arrive back in Israel at approximately 1700 hours 
local time, and have already heard of the mass welcome which 
will be awaiting them. 

In addition to the 10 nations qualified from the 2002 World 
Champions, subject to ISAF ratification, the following 12 nations 
will also be in Athens next year, Israel, Australia, Belgium, 
Norway, Ukraine, Spain, USA, Japan, Bulgaria, Canada, Latvia, 
Brazil.