Match Racing Campaign for the Olympics in 2012
The GBR Match Race Girls are one of the top International Women's Match Racing Teams and have been selected to represent Great Britain at the 2012 Olympic Games in this exciting new sailing discipline. Having gained National, European and World Championship titles, and rapidly risen through the ranks to lead the World Rankings, Lucy Macgregor, Annie Lush and Kate Macgregor are a promising prospect for the future of British Sailing.
Since learning to sail in Poole Harbour as children, Lucy and Annie have always been a driven individuals. After a successful youth sailing career for Lucy, and gaining 'blues' in three sports at Cambridge University for Annie, they both entered a full-time Olympic campaign with Shirley Robertson for Beijing 2008. In 2009 Lucy and Annie launched their own campaign for Gold in 2012, in the new discipline of Match Racing. In 2010 they were joined by Lucy's younger sister Kate, who is herself a top crew in her own right having won a number of championship titles and Gold at the 2007 Olympic Youth Festival in Australia.
Catch up on the latest news below, find out more about the team, or use the menu on the right to explore this site.
Thanks all! We had a couple of drinks to celebrate and are now back home sweet home in Poole....it is very, very... http://t.co/8zegrnH5 2012/01/30
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Thanks all! We had a couple of drinks to celebrate and are now back home sweet home in Poole....it is very, very... http://t.co/8zegrnH5
Gold fleet here we come
Wednesday 26th January, 2011
Another good day for Mary, Kate and I today as we won 3 out of 4 races to earn our place in the gold fleet and quarter finals. It was another tricky day with close races throughout but an improvement on yesterday was that we were giving our opponents penalties rather than receiving them ourselves!
The first round is so critical for us with the format we race with because only the top two teams from each of the three groups are guaranteed a place in the gold fleet (the seeding round for the quarter finals). This means that every race counts and even with just one loss you can still miss the cut. In our group going into the final race, if we won we would be through to the gold fleet and if we lost we would be in the repechage so the pressure was on for our race against Anna Tunnicliffe. It was not a good start for us but we were ahead round the first mark and still ahead – just with Tunnicliffe having a penalty round the leeward mark. Racing remained extremely close up the second beat but we remained ahead until the top of the final run where after being rolled, we were behind but with the Americans still having to do a penalty. When Tunnicliffe dropped her spinnaker in the bottom third of the beat it was time for us to make a choice, match her and drop too or use our positioning to be able to roll her with our kite still up. Option two it was and after a shaky gybe at first, we rolled them straight away however still were being luffed – something the Y flagged solved and we crossed the finish line ahead and with Tunnicliffe having two penalties….it got the heart rate up a little ;).
Tomorrow we will sail the first three of our gold fleet races in the middle of the day aftre the repecharge group. Keep updated at the event website http://rmocr.ussailing.org/.
Lucy x
Good start on day 1
Tuesday 25th January, 2011
It was a good start for Mary, Kate and I on day 1 of The Rolex Miami OCR. Despite making life a little more tricky than it needed to be for ourselves at time, gaining two penalties in the three races, we came out the right side of the score sheet with three wins. The day for us was mostly about trying to settle in together as a team and get the communication and boat work working while also trying to win those vital races in this early round. We are pleased with the day and looking forward to today where we’ll have slightly higher ranked teams to race against in the round robin where the aim is to finish in the top two.
There are live updates and tracking on http://rmocr.ussailing.org/ where you can also cheer us on!
Lucy x
Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta
Sunday 23rd January, 2011
Tomorrow will be the start of the Miami Olympic Classes Regatta for the GBR Match Race Girls and for this event Kate and I will be joined by Mary Rook. We have had a couple of very brief practice sessions this weekend and have reached a stage where we feel ready to race tomorrow (ish!). With a world ranking of 3 at the moment, we are in group C for the initial round and so will be last on tomorrow to start our round robin. We have quite a tough group to start with: Tunnicliffe (USA), Le Berre (FRA), Barkow (USA), Kjellberg (SWE), Hazzard (NZL), Abbott (CAN) and Dellenbaugh (USA) so every race will count from day 1. Conditions are looking good for tomorrow with around 12 knots so fingers crossed we’ll deliver!
Lucy
Miami preparations begin
Saturday 15th January, 2011
With Christmas and New Year feeling like distant memories, we are now in sunny, breezy Miami and joined by Mary to prepare for The Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta. Due to the slight chill in the air at home at this time of year and not many people to sail against, we have come out to the venue quite early this year to get some good training in. The last four days we have been training alongside the three American teams which has been great for us since we have not raced the Elliott 6m since Skandia Sail for Gold Regatta! Mostly we have been doing a mixture of practice starts and races to sharpen us up then today we have a day off before four more days training with a mixture of speed, boat handling and some racing.
The event starts Monday 24th so stay tuned and we’ll keep you up to date.
Lucy
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