Gay Games Begins

The opening ceremony was held on a hot and sweaty night. With the other 12,000 athletes we queued up and walked onto Solier Field, an iconioc venue to many Chicago citizens. Dayna carried the Team Sydney banner onto the field, what a star! There are two other Australian sailing teams here with us - and about 300 other Aussies. There was a magical moment when the lights were turned out and we were all holding different coloured lights so the whole field looked like a shining rainbow flag. (Photos later)

Today we had our first training session on the lake. It isn't so different but less wind interference since there are no islands, headlands etc to get in the way. The heat is still really something with many apologies from the locals who say "you should have been here last week...!!


But we feel like superstars with so many people coming up to us to say "we love you Australians.. ". We've even been offered free drinks... but of course we are still in training. We passed the weigh in with flying colours and then went off to celebrate with a huge US breakfast.

Our hosts are fabulous, driving us around, keeping us fed and watered. Wonderful ground support.

More training tomorrow and then our first race on Tuesday at 9am.