Bundock and Ashby on the rise

But French maintain a slim lead as Tornado Worlds reach halfway stage

• After a day lost to lack of wind yesterday, today the fleet raced in sea breeze condition
• Discard now comes into play and Bundock and Ashby (above) zoom up to second
• The Canadian team of Oskar Johansson and Kevin Stittle are sailing well and looking for country qualification for the Games
• Two further races scheduled for Friday, racing concludes Saturday

Yann Guichard and Alexandre Gaebler of France still hold the lead at the 2008 Tornado World Championship now past the mid way point in Takapuna, North Shore City, Auckland.

While the forecast wasn’t promising Takapuna turned it on this Thursday with fabulous sailing conditions and warm, sunny skies. Racing started on time and sailors enjoyed a north easterly breeze which built through the afternoon to around 12 knots for the second race of the day making for exciting sailing.

The snakes and ladders on the leader board continued today with constant shuffling in the overall standings. Now past the midway point in this ten race series, the one discard for the series has come into play which saw some competitors make big gains on the board.

Guichard and Gaebler were 13th in the first race of the day allowing the Canadian’s to steal the overall lead momentarily , however the French were quick to fight back coming 4th in race 6, they then discarded their worst result and took back the lead.

Defending world champions Bundock and Ashby were the big movers of the day shifting up to 2nd just six points adrift of the leaders putting themselves right back in the game for the title. They were 8th in race 5 and then followed that up with a win in race 6 to rocket six places up the leaderboard aided by the first discard coming into play.

It was a mixed day for Canadian’s Oskar Johansson and Kevin Stittle who took the overall lead after a 4th in race 5. But in race 6 they were 19th across the line and now sit in 3rd place overall at the end of the day. Still looking to qualify their country for an Olympic spot they are well out in front in this race which sees ten nations who are yet to qualify fighting it out for four remaining places.

German’s Roland Gaebler and Gunnar Struckman had a disappointing day losing their overnight position of 2nd falling back to 5th with a 30th and an 18th in racing today.

Lying second in the race for Olympic qualification is the kiwi pair of Aaron McIntosh and Mark Kennedy. The New Zealander’s were pleased with their performance on the water today and happy with their overall consistency.

“That was a good one for us,” said Aaron McIntosh. “The big thing is that we’ve been super consistent all the way through.”

When asked about their tactics for racing McIntosh replied, “Keep it simple, do the simple things well. We’ve had two days of offshore and today we had the sea breeze which was pretty light, and a little bit sticky. But we had good starts and managed to get to the right side of the course early.”

McIntosh is pleased and perhaps a touch surprised at his overall standing. When asked how he was feeling now six races in he said “Really great, a little surprised, but we know we’ve got in ourselves.”

Austrian’s Hagara and Steinacher who are reigning Olympic champions improved their overall standing today from 14th up to 9th which also puts them in a good position to earn Olympic qualification.

Racing resumes tomorrow with a planned start time of 1 o’clock with two races scheduled; racing concludes on Saturday.

To listen to an interview today on the event website with Darren Bundock click here .

	Nat	Helm	Crew	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	Total	Nett
1st	FRA	Yann Guichard	Alexandre Guyader	4	9	1	3	-13	4	34	21
2nd	AUS	Darren Bundock	Glen Ashby	14	-23	2	2	8	1	50	27
3rd	CAN	Oskar Johansson	Kevin Stittle	-21	1	3	1	4	19	49	28
4th	ITA	Francesco Marcolini	Edoardi Bianchi	11	7	10	5	1	(52 OCS)	86	34
5th	GER	Roland Gaebler	Gunnar Struckman	3	3	4	9	-30	18	67	37
6th	FRA	Billy Besson	Arnaud Jarlegan	19	-20	7	4	5	6	61	41
7th	NZL	Aaron McIntosh	Mark Kennedy	-17	8	5	7	10	13	60	43
8th	NED	Mitch Booth	Pim Nieuwenhuis	7	2	6	8	-26	22	71	45
9th	AUT	Roman Hagara	Hans Peter Steinacher	10	-25	12	15	2	9	73	48
10th	USA	John Lovell	Charlie Ogletree	2	5	29	(52 DNF)	3	16	107	55
11th	GRE	Iordanis Paschalidis	Konstantine Trigonis	6	-24	20	16	9	5	80	56
12th	FRA	Xavier Revil	Cristophe Espagnon	18	12	14	6	6	(52 OCS)	108	56
13th	ESP	Fernando Echavarri	Anton Paz	1	14	8	11	23	(52 OCS)	109	57
14th	ARG	Santiago Lange	Carlos Espinola	15	10	13	12	-17	8	75	58
15th	GBR	Andrew Walsh	Edward Barney	5	4	21	-28	22	10	90	62
16th	RUS	Andrey Kirilyuk	Valery Ushkov	16	13	15	13	-33	12	102	69
17th	GER	Johannes Polgar	Florian Spalteholz	-27	22	18	14	20	3	104	77
18th	UKR	Pavlo Kalynchev	Andrey Shaufranyuk	9	19	-24	21	15	15	103	79
19th	BEL	Carolijn Brouwer	Sebbe Godefroid	12	11	19	10	27	(52 OCS)	131	79
20th	GBR	Rob Wilson	Mark Bulkeley	13	15	11	23	21	-30	113	83
21st	DEN	Allan Norregaard	Michael Risoer	-22	18	17	22	11	17	107	85
22nd	GBR	Leigh McMillan	Will Howden	20	21	9	(52 DNF)	14	24	140	88
23rd	ESP	Toni Rivas	Fabian Escude	34	6	-36	17	25	7	125	89
24th	PUR	Enrique Figueroa	Jorge Hernandez	8	17	28	-32	31	11	127	95
25th	GER	Tino Mittelmeier	Niko Mittelmeier	23	32	(52 DNF)	29	16	2	154	102
26th	GBR	John Gimson	Stuart Bithell	26	-29	16	27	18	20	136	107
27th	NZL	Bruce Kendall	Blair Tuke	31	-38	30	24	7	21	151	113
28th	AUT	Thomas Zajac	Thomas Czajka	29	16	25	31	-32	14	147	115
29th	RUS	Sergey Dzhienbaev	Maxim Semenov	24	-40	27	20	19	25	155	115
30th	NZL	Rex Sellers	Brett Sellers	32	26	23	-33	24	27	165	132
31st	GBR	Tom Phipps	Marcus Lynch	43	(52 DNF)	22	19	28	23	187	135
32nd	CHN	You Jia Lu	Xiu Ke Chen	30	37	34	25	12	(52 OCS)	190	138
33rd	AUS	Rohan langworthy	Jack Benson	25	34	31	18	-40	35	183	143
34th	BRA	Bruno Di Bernaldi	Mario Tinoco	33	27	35	26	29	(52 OCS)	202	150
35th	AUS	Brett Burvill	Ryan Duffield	-35	33	32	30	34	26	190	155
36th	POL	Piotr Kowalewski	Maciey Klosowicz	37	31	33	34	-42	32	209	167
37th	NZL	Nigel Williams	Jeremy Stephenson	38	36	26	-39	37	33	209	170
38th	NZL	Dave Shaw	Susan Shaw	36	35	37	37	-38	31	214	176
39th	GER	Eckart Kaphengst	Rasmus Toepsch	28	30	(52 DNF)	52 DNC	36	34	232	180
40th	VEN	Saba Yamil	Cendiza Gonzalo	39	39	38	-41	35	29	221	180
41st	NZL	Paul Francis	Aaron Duncan	40	28	(52 DNF)	36	41	36	233	181
42nd	AUS	Damian Ford	Mark Edmonds	(52 DNS)	41	40	35	45	28	241	189
43rd	CHN	Bo Lin	Shan Feng Yang	44	42	39	38	-48	41	252	204
44th	AUS	Paul Peterson	Matt Thackray	42	-44	44	44	39	40	253	209
45th	AUS/GBR	Stephen Medwell	Stuart Offer	41	(52 DNF)	41	43	46	39	262	210
46th	NZL	David Mead	Chris Burgess	-48	43	42	40	47	43	263	215
47th	AUS	Allan Gamble	Kim Nicholas	46	46	45	42	-49	37	265	216
48th	NZL	William Caunce	Andrew Springford	(52 DNF)	47	46	47	44	38	274	222
49th	GER/NZL	Justus Wolf	Justus Maus	45	45	43	46	-51	45	275	224
50th	AUS	Paul Raymond	Nicholas Raymond	-49	48	47	48	43	44	279	230
51st	CHN	An Jie Lu	Xie Hai Zhuang	47	(52 DNF)	48	45	50	42	284	232