Credit: Sander van der Borch
Credit: Richard Langdon
Credit: Jesús Renedo
Credit: Lloyd Images
Credit: Lloyd Images
Credit: Lloyd Images
Credit: onEdition
Credit: Toby Melville
Credit: Richard Langdon
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 11th June, 2011
It wasn’t quite our day today in the match racing finals at Skandia Sail for Gold, losing to Anna Tunnicliffe 3–0.
Our first start was very close, with both teams coming to the line early, we thought we’d made a good start and gained the dominant right hand side, but unfortunately we were judged to be over and had to restart, trailing by some margin for the rest of the match. The second and third matches were very close, but we didn’t manage to nail the starts and although always threatening we couldn’t pass to take a race win.
While we’re disappointed with the defeat in the finals today, overall we’re very pleased to come away with a medal here on home waters in the biggest test yet at the 2012 venue.
We’re delighted to also have been confirmed entry to the official Olympic Test Event which will be held in Weymouth & Portland in August, where only the top 12 nations will be permitted to send a single team, as it will be in the Olympics next year. So we now two more months of training to turn that Silver into a Gold! :)
Many thanks for all the support we’ve received this week, both from our sponsors, supporters, and friends and family cheering us on.
Friday 10th June, 2011
A very long day on the water today for the Match Race Girls at Skandia Sail for Gold regatta in Weymouth, with the breeze slowly building throughout the day to about 20kts.
First up was our quarter final matches against Mandy Mulder (NED). We won the first, then they levelled the score. We won the third, then they equalised again, making it 2–2 and a winner takes all in the 5th. The deciding match was close, but after a good start we maintained the dominant position and a small lead throughout to go through 3–2.
Our semi-final was against Sally Barkow (USA). Sally won the pre-start in the first match, and went on to win. There was drama in second match at the leward mark as Barkow was given two penalties, the second of which has to be taken immediately. This allowed us to sail to an easy win and bring the score level at 1–1. In the third match we picked up a penalty in the last few seconds of the pre-start, but maintained control and extended our lead such that we could take the penalty at the 2nd windward mark. This put us neck-and-neck with Barkow on the final run, and a close battle ensued. Several gybes and a bit of a luffing match saw Barkow given first one and then a second penalty meaning again that they have to stop to take one immediately, letting us cruise in to the finish and a 2–1 lead. In the fourth match we had a good pre-start managing to inflict a penalty on Barkow and lead away in a controlling position off the line. The race was again extremely close, though they didn’t manage to take their penalty and we won the semis 3–1.
Tomorrow sees us race for gold in the Finals against Anna Tunnicliffe (USA), Barkow will face Claire Leroy (FRA) in the petit final to decide bronze.
Time for some rest now, then bring on tomorrow!
