Ashley breaks NZ yachting's golden drought
Birthday present returns gold for Ashley
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Sailing
An Olympic gold medal draped around his neck, a half-eaten Snickers bar in his hand, a shattered Tom Ashley slumped on a leather couch and soaked it all up.
He harked back nine years to his first sailboard, a 15th birthday present from his parents John and Julie which set him from yachting P-class on the path to today's stunning gold medal sail for New Zealand on Fushan Bay.
Dad John was on hand, proudly watching his son from the media boat, and Ashley junior was on the phone to his mum in Auckland and his Brazilian fiancee Mariana, who was enduring a nerve-wracking sleepless night inland from Rio de Janeiro. The pair will marry there in January.
One of his first well-wishers was Olympic icon Barbara Kendall, who along with fellow 2000 Sydney bronze medallist Aaron McIntosh inspired him to dream of the Olympics on a board.
It was all Ashley could do to keep his emotions in check as God Defend New Zealand rang out under the late afternoon Qingdao sun.
"I've been kind of on the verge of tears for the last 24 hours. I managed to hold it all in but the relief killed a little bit of all that," Ashley said.
"I slept okay, but all through last night and this morning I was pretty nervous and you'd be mad not to be. It's a pretty tough situation."
Today he started one point off the lead, held by Frenchman Julien Bontemps, and level with another close rival Nick Dempsey.
The dangerman Shahar Zubari, a light air specialist, was the potential giantkiller in light eight-knot air.
After Ashley got a fast start to the right of the course, he tacked left to keep his two rivals within sight.
Then came two big moments: when he crossed Dempsey with a metre to spare, and when Bontemps fell off his board at the first mark.
The Briton screamed at Ashley in protest, but it was dismissed by the on-water jury. The 24-year-old Aucklander knew he'd won his first battle.
"He had a little bit of nerves on as well and made a bigger deal of it than it should have been, so I figured at that stage that he was a little bit broken and struggling a bit."
While Zubari sailed past, Ashley had enough of a buffer and just needed to hold off the other pair. He held Bontemps by eight seconds in what his coach Grant Beck described as the perfect race.
"It was pretty much a case of managing it, not trying to let too many guys past and staying between my opposition," Ashley said.
"I was trying to win gold but the main focus was on not coming away with nothing as well.
"I took it a little bit easy on the downwind just in case I had to work on the reaches but that didn't help so much because I was just buggered when I got to the reaches anyway.
"I was hoping no one was going to come through."
Then the relief, and a thought to all who'd helped him, including Mariana who was on hand for his punishing training schedule in Spain.
A big party was in store, then an uncertain future with a break and possibly a legal degree on the cards for Ashley who speaks fluent Portuguese, Spanish and French.
"The first thing is to have a really good holiday and spend a couple of months enjoying this.
"I wouldn't say I've lived like a monk but I've been really really focused on this one objective for the last four years."
- NZPA
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