To the wire

GBR's Jaques and Sign hold off a strong charge to win 29er Worlds

The Gold fleet places were decided over 2 days and 7 races rather than the schedule 3 days and 10 races at the 29er World Championships in Silva Plana, Switzerland.

The three leading contenders from the qualifiers - Jaques/Sign, GBR. Lehtinen/Pennann, FIN & O'Conner/Babbage, AUS had a mixed penultimate day scoring respectively 1-9-7, 15-6-12, 6-1-9. In fact the best score of the day was 4th placed Pepe Bettini/Frederic Vilambrossa ARG on 3-3-2 which closed the gap on O'Conner/ Babbage to 17 points, still a very tall order for the last day.

So with 4 races to go Jaques/Sign had a 5 point lead over the Fins who in turn led the Aussies by just 1 point.

Lehtinen/Pennanen pulled off two immaculate pin end starts to lead in the first 2 races and go on to win. The gap was closed on Jaques/Sign to just 1 point with 2 races to go.

The next race was crucial, Lehtinen/Pennanen led Jaques/Sign by one boat at the windward mark and of all of the times to happen a knot in their spinnaker halyard let Jaques/Sign through and another 3 boats. They recovered to to 4th but crucially Jaques/Sign finished 2nd to O'Conner/Babbage to lead by 3 points with one race to go.

In the final race Jaques/Sign sailed with out fault - a good safe start and the right shifts gave them a close second behind the New Zealand team which was enough to secure them the World Championship title.

1. GBR619 CREWSAVER Tristan Jaques, Alain Sign 34

2. FIN548 ARCADA Lauri Lehtinen, Miikka Pennane 41

3. AUS648 Harken David O'Connor, Scott Babbage 44

4. ARG002 SAREXPRESS Pepe Bettini, Federico Villambrosa 84

5. GBR014 MUSTO Justin Visser, Simon Wheeler 97