GBR Match Race Girls

It seems amazing that it’s already Day 9 of the Women’s Match Racing World Championships already, and yet we’re only about two thirds of the way through the event!

A delayed start today eventually saw a light sea breeze take over from the gradient, with racing getting under way about three hours later than scheduled. We were out in the first two flights, beating Silvia Roca Mata (ESP) and Silja Lehtinen (FIN). Six more flights were sailed but none for us, as racing was curtailed before we were due out again.

However an interesting one to watch was a head-to-head between the two Aussie teams, world #8 Nicky Souter against the young world #19 Olivia Price — formerly a crew member on Souter’s team who has recently turned rival and is proving a real challenger for Olympic Selection. It was a very close match with a number of lead changes keeping the crowds in the grandstand on the edge of their seats, but it was Price who edged over the line first to take the win away from the older and more experienced team.

So all in all quite a lot of waiting around for us, but a good day ending on 6–1 and still leading the repechage ahead of Price (AUS) on 7–3 and Kjellberg (SWE) 6–3.

In the fleet racing, the top 10 in each of classes that have been competing this week had their medal race, with four new World Champions decided. Massive congratulations to our fellow Skandia Team GBR team mates have put in some great results, with Giles Scott (@GilesScott) taking the title in the Finn class and Ed Wright (@EdWright11) picking up the bronze. In the Mens 470 Luke Patience and Stu Bithell (@PatienceBithell) took the silver medal, while Bryony Shaw and Alison Young finished 7th in the RS:X Women and Laser Radial classes. The remaining Olympic classes — Star, 49er, 470 Women, RS:X Men and Men’s Laser — start tomorrow and carry on through to the weekend.

The schedule for Women’s Match racing tomorrow is for the final three gold group seeding flights to be completed first, before another 7 flights of the repechage where we’re due to sail in 4 matches. We need to keep getting wins on the board to ensure we make it through to the quarters, so another big day tomorrow!

Keep an eye on the ISAF Channel on YouTube for the daily video round-ups.

Cheers,

Lucy, Annie and Kate x

After missing out on the gold group yesterday on the tie break count-back today we began the repechage, a huge round robin of 16 teams placed 3rd to 10th from Group A and Group B which will decide the remaining four quarter final places.

With a good breeze around lunchtime that died away as the afternoon went on, another long day on the water saw 9 flights completed. We sat out the first four, and then had five races in a row. The first two went to plan, defeating Echegoyen (ESP) and Tulloch (USA) before our only loss of the day against Senfft (BRA). Two more matches swiftly followed, and we dispatched Kjellberg (SWE) and Groeneveld (NED) to lead the repechage overnight on a 4–1 scoreline.

Overall we’re very pleased with our day. It was another tricky day on the course, especially sailing into the early evening as the breeze died off. It all sort of merged into one… but we’re pretty happy to come away with four wins and just the one loss.

Tomorrow there are 11 flights scheduled, we’re on in the first two and the last two, so another long day but hopefully with a little down time in the middle. Strangely of our matches today were against competitors who came through with us in Group B, so we’d raced them all once before. Tomorrow sees us up against some Group A competitors, so it should be good to get some experience against them.

Keep up to date at matchracingresults.com and follow all of the action at the Worlds on perth2011.com.

You might also like to read Annie’s interview — “Passionate Persistence” on Sail-World.com

Cheers,

Lucy

Unfortunately our 4 wins out of 5 races today was not quite enough to put us through to the gold fleet today at the world championships.

We ended up on the same points as Leroy (FRA) and Mulder (NED) however although we beat Leroy in the final race, and all of the 5 highest ranked competitors, the tie break did not go our way so we ended up 3rd in Group B. Only the top two from each group progress directly to the seeding round for the quarters.

So we will begin the repechage tomorrow, where 3rd to 10th from each of the first two round robin groups will sail in another 16 boat round robin to determine the final 4 quarter finalists. It’ll probably be going on for the next three days, so time to start it all again!

While it’s a bit disappointing to have missed out on the gold group on count-back, sailing in the repechage will actually give us a lot more time on the water as we’ll do something like 10 more matches than if we were in gold. Our goal is on the Olympics, and being here in Perth is expensive so in a way it’s better we’re out on the water making the most of the racing rather than waiting in the hotel. We will now definitely race all of the teams that are likely to qualify for the Olympics so that’s a big plus.

We’re off to start with tomorrow morning then on for 7 races in a row, its going to be long week!

Keep up to date with the results and the daily TV summaries are available YouTube.

Lucy