Credit: Sander van der Borch
Credit: Richard Langdon
Credit: Jesús Renedo
Credit: Team Volvo for Life
Credit: Team Volvo for Life
Credit: Team Volvo for Life
Credit: onEdition
Credit: Toby Melville
Credit: Richard Langdon
Credit: Richard Langdon
Credit: Richard Langdon
Credit: Richard Langdon
Credit: Simon Winnall
Saturday 28th January, 2012
Crikey — a couple more nail-biting matches in some light and fluky conditions but today we took the gold medal at the Rolex Miami OCR, defeating Olivia Price’s Australian team 3–1.
Full details of today’s action to follow, but for now check out yesterday’s round-up video featuring some of the match racing from the quarter finals (though sadly not our all important deciding match which really was a thriller!)
Right, off for a wee celebration!
Lucy, Annie & Kate x
Thursday 26th January, 2012
Wow, big day for us today at the Rolex Miami OCR but we’re through to the semi finals :)
The regatta started on Monday, though strangely we began with a lay-day as Group A raced all day. Tuesday was our turn, and it was a long day on the water as we competed in both the first and the last of the 11 flights sailed by Group B. Six races in all for us, bit of an average start but an OK day with four wins and two losses.
Group A were out again first yesterday to complete their round robin, with Sally Barkow (USA), Silja Lehtinen (FIN), Ekaterina Skudina (RUS) and Anna Tunnicliffe (USA) making it through to the quarter finals. There’s a change of format this year at the World Cup events, with two groups of 12 instead of three groups of 8. The top 4 from each group then go straight into to the quarters, making it a pretty big cut with no second chances of progressing through a repechage round.
Yesterday we only did two races, first a win over Olivia Price (AUS), but then lost to Julie Bossard (FRA) which was pretty disappointing. A stupid mistake early on, we were both over the line early and I took the most ridiculous way to get back behind the line and ended up with too big a distance to try and catch up.
We’d been struggling a bit with a couple of little things in the boat over the last couple of days, but had a great day today. We had three races left to complete our round robin, and the results were really tight at the top. A good start to the day saw us with two wins against the Dutch teams of Renee Groeneveld and Mandy Mulder. With one flight to go to complete Group B there were six teams all pretty much tied on points with only the top 4 to advance. Our crucial final match was against Claire Leroy (FRA) and proved to be a typically close contest, but we just managed to get to the finish line ahead to make it three wins out of three and in fact to win the round robin. Had we lost to Claire however, I don’t think we’d have made the quarters on the tie-break, as indeed the French team didn’t.
Due to a breakdown we had a bit of a wait while the other three quarter finals were held, before we were on against the 4th place finisher from Group A — our adversary from the World Championship finals in Perth just a month ago — Anna Tunnicliffe. The 0–4 score line from our last encounter belied the closeness of the racing, and this time around was no exception either. Today we were starting really well against them and in fact in the first two matches we were leading her the whole way round the course only to get rolled at the finish line. Two-nil down in a first to three wins match is never a great place to be, but we had confidence and dug deep to turn it around, kept on doing what we were doing well and worked out how to defend her a little bit better, and delivered three straight wins to advance to the semis.
It’s really good to have got through the quarter-finals, it is always a massive sigh of relief because it’s such a big cut and everyone racing in the quarters is good — Anna’s the World Champion and we meet her in the quarters. It’s a really tough stage and a relief to get through it! A pleasing end to a pretty tough day :)
Tomorrow we’re up against Silja Lehtinen’s team from Finland, follow the action on Twitter @RMOCR_CourseE or at matchracingresults.com.
Cheers,
Lucy, Annie & Kate x
Saturday 17th December, 2011
Yesterday’s 25 minute video round-up from the ISAF World Championships in Perth features excellent coverage of the final day in the Women’s Match Racing event… lets hope the media output at Weymouth and Portland during the Olympics is just as good!
Friday 16th December, 2011
Four exhilarating and extremely close matches today in the finals at the ISAF Women’s Match Racing World Championships in Perth, though unfortunately luck was not on GBR’s side. The title has passed to the USA — congratulations to Anna, Molly and Deb on becoming the 2011 World Champions! Claire Leroy (FRA) won the petit final to take bronze, with Ekaterina Skudina (RUS) in 4th.
Today’s finals held in the harbour right in front of the packed grandstand provided a thrilling afternoon’s spectacle as the Women’s finalists battled for the title, demonstrating once again how match racing is an an exciting spectator sport for both sailing enthusiasts and non-sailors alike.
The Match Race Girls have been in Perth for about a month, cumulating in an intense two weeks of competition which has seen them compete in more than 40 individual matches. Coming ashore the girls commented “It’s been a great two weeks, but hard work. We’re really pleased with the way we’re sailing at the moment and our performance at this regatta, we’re quick, but today we made some mistakes in getting penalties which is quite frustrating. Without them we’d have been looking very strong today and the scoreline could have looked quite different. We’re looking forward to building on this and competing next year at the Olympics.”
Read more about the day’s racing at the Skandia Team GBR and Perth2011 sites, and there’s also been considerable interest in the news. Video highlights and a full report from the girls to follow later… for now there’s some celebrating to be done :)
