Bermuda awakes this morning to the news that Cecilia Wollmann has finished thirteenth in the long-awaited medal race in the Byte CII class at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China.

The result left the 16-year-old in a closing position of tenth overall out of a fleet of 30 in the women’s one-person dinghy, thus ending the Island’s hopes of leaving the Far East with a medal.

Wollmann had endured a frustrating 48 hours previously in which racing on Friday and Saturday was not possible owing to the lack of wind on Jinniu Lake. Friday’s cancellation was more damaging because it meant that the Royal Hamilton Amateur Dinghy Club sailor was deprived of three chances to get into strong medal contention.

When racing was finally permissible this morning, amid light rain showers and seven-knot breezes, it was the Uruguayan Dolores Moreira Fraschini who reacted best with a victory that catapulted her through the fleet to seventh.

But the big winner on the day was Samantha Yom, of Singapore, who took second and with it the gold medal. Odile van Aanholt, of the Netherlands, was seventh in the medal race and had to settle for silver after a week-long battle with Yom, and the bronze went to Jarian Brandes, of Peru.

Carolina Albano, the Italian whom Wollmann had been targeting for third, had a nightmare of a race and finished 25th, which dropped her nine places to twelfth overall.

For Wollmann, though, a top-ten finish represents a remarkable turnaround after she was lumbered with a disqualification on the opening day to go with what would become a worst legal finish of fourteenth. What followed was proof that she could mix it with the best young sailors in the world, with a sequence of second, fifth, fourth and fourth underlining her potential before a pair of thirteenth places three days apart.