Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Annapolis boardsailor Farrah Hall lost her second attempt to convince a five-man protest panel that she was unfairly stripped of a place on the U.S. Olympic team.

The panel yesterday reaffirmed two earlier decisions to send Nancy Rios of Miami to the Games instead. Hall stood first by one point after eight days of racing at the trials in California last October, but Rios immediately filed for redress, claiming her fourth-place finish in the last race was affected by a collision at the start.

The jury held a hearing at which only Rios, 19, testified, and awarded the sailor second place in the race, boosting her ahead of Hall overall. The panel reopened the hearing at Hall's insistence last week in Providence, R.I., with 21 hours of testimony from Hall, Rios, two other competitors and several witnesses. Hall's supporters claimed the collision did not hamper Rios enough to warrant the reversal.

"I am disillusioned and bitterly disappointed with the committee's actions," Hall said yesterday. "We provided telling photographic evidence and witness testimony from other competitors and observers that showed that Nancy Rios's fourth-place finish in the last race was not significantly affected by the collision or a tear in her sail."

Hall, who is in Europe training, said she will pursue her claims with a U.S. Olympic Committee review board, arguing that U.S. Sailing's rules do not meet the minimum due process standard guaranteed by the USOC and federal law.

"People fighting unfair parking tickets receive more legal protection than I have as the winner on the water of the Olympic trials," she said.

-- Angus Phillips