SAILOR Hannah Stodel faces an agonising wait to discover if she will win a Paralympic bronze medal.

The Mersea Island sailor, along with John Robertson and Stephen Thomas, are at the eye of a storm of protests following an off the water penatly points decision yesterday.

The British Paralympic GB crew were sitting third in the fleet after Wednesday and with yesterday’s medal race cancelled, because of a lack of wind, they would have picked up the bronze medal.

However, the British trio were hit with a four-point penalty, following an incident between a member of their support staff and a technical officer on Tuesday, which knocked them back into fifth place.

And without the opportunity to get back out on the water the bronze went to the Norweigian team of Aleksander Wang-Hansen, Marie Solberg and Per Eugen Kristiansen on 42 points, three points ahead of the British.

The gold was won by the Netherland’s Udo Hessels, Marcel Van de Veen and Mischa Rossen, with he silver going to Germany.

However, the British are still trying to get the decision overturned, after a number of protests have already failed, and the issue could be ended quickly or drag on for months.

ParalympicsGB Sailing team leader Stephen Park said: “We actually think that when you get to any situation where the athletes scorecard is being altered through a misunderstanding between two shore staff, one of which is a technical official and one of which is a team support staff, about something that doesn’t have any impact on performance it is a sad day for the sport.

“We think that frankly, irrespective of the outcome, we need to make sure that this is rectified for the future.

“Obviously in the process we’ll be doing everything we can to get the hearing addressed appropriately and get John, Hannah and Steve the bronze medal that they deserve before the jury decision took it away from them.”