Two Person Dinghy (470), Women

Ukraine’s Ruslana Taran and Olena Pakholchyk had won a bronze medal in this event in 1996, and had then won three World and three European Championships before the Sydney Olympics, but their coach, Viktor Kobalenko, moved to Australia and started training Jenny Armstrong and Belinda Stowell. The event was dominated in Sydney by Armstrong and Stowell who won four races, with the other seven spread among seven other crews.

Armstrong was competing in her second Olympics, but in 1992 had represented New Zealand. She and Stowell would return in 2004, but place only 14th. Taran competed again at the 2004 Olympics, in the Yngling class, winning a silver medal. The silver medal skipper in 2000 was American JJ Isler, who had won a bronze medal in this class in 1992. In the years before Sydney, Isler made history when she was the skipper for Mighty Mary USA-34, the first all-female crew to challenge for the America’s Cup. Isler’s crew member in Sydney was Pease Glaser, whose brother, Jay, won a 1984 Olympic silver medal in the Tornado class.