Pink and Peacock take the 49er lead

As Lucy Macgregor scrapes through to the semi-finals at the Perth 2011 ISAF World Championships

Light winds hampered the start of competition on day 12 of the Perth 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships. The wind speeds topped out at 16 knots in the afternoon.

49er

Skandia Team GBR’s John Pink and Rick Peacock have moved into the lead after today’s racing. While Denmark’s Peter Kruger Andersen and Nicolai Thorsell began the day top of the fleet, a capsize in race 7 today saw them drop to 15th overall.

New Zealand’s Peter Burling and Blair Tuke came third in race 7, but only managed a 12th in race 8.

Australia’s Iain Jensen and Nathan Outterridge, ranked first in the world, sailed top 10 finishes to be third overall at end of race 8, the last for the day.

The Blue fleet almost didn’t sail today because of the light wind, but went ahead with a win for Pink and Peacock, who finished 40 seconds ahead of Sweden’s Charlie Enlund Ekberg and Kalle Torlen in race 7.

Winds crept up to 16 knots towards the end of race 7, but by the time the boats were in sequence for race 8, the water was flat and winds were back down to 12 knots.

Race 8 finally started around 1700 local time and was won by Australia’s Will and Sam Phillips. Pink and Peacock came in sixth, which was good enough to take top spot overall, four points ahead of France’s Stephane Christidis and Emmanuel Dyen.

There was one notable rise to fame: French sailors Yann Rocherieux and Mathieu Frei improved their overall standing from 67th position to 14th, thanks to an eighth and a third on Wednesday.

Among the other Brits, Dave Evans and Ed Powys are in fourth overall, just one point from third, with a ninth and a race win to show for their efforts on Wednesday. Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign bounced back from a difficult first race, in which they finishing 16th after re-crossing the startline thinking they had jumped the gun, to post a third in their second race of the day. They’re in 16th overall.

Top 20 results:

Laser

While defending world champion Australian Tom Slingsby was setting the pace with his fourth win on the third day of Laser racing, the rest of the field was jockeying for positions in the all-important Gold fleet.

Slingsby won and then had a poor ninth when the wind swung left, but he can discard this leaving him leading the fleet on 10 points.

“I had a good one and a not so good one today, it was a crazy day,” said Slingsby. “In the first race I was doing well in about third and picked the left hand side when the wind went funky, I was able to get up to first and then hold on to win. In race two we had a massive wind shift which was practically a self tacker to the left for me, with the guys who started at the other end of the line rounding the top mark minutes ahead. I had to play catch up again and caught as many as I could heading towards the finish.”

Slingsby said that he’ll take some confidence into the Gold fleet following four race wins from the first six races, but that the conditions continue to challenge the entire fleet.

“I know that I’m sailing well when the breeze is normal, when it goes crazy it’s a bit of luck of the day but I’m in good shape going into tomorrow,” he said. “It’s weird what’s going on with the wind, it’s a hard time to lead an event because you’re trying to watch your opposition and who’s close to you on points but in stuff like that you can’t cover them. If it comes back to the Fremantle Doctor I’ll rest a bit easier because I know it’ll come down to the little shifts and nothing crazy on the race course where the others could get 20 or 30 points on me.”

Skandia Team GBR’s Paul Goodison is seven points behind with a sixth and a first today to maintain second position, while Germany’s Simon Groteluschen held on to third place on 19 points with identical finishes to Goodison.

Australian Ashley Brunning moved up six positions to fourth while Austrian Andreas Geritzer was one of the biggest movers of the day, rising 11 places to fifth on the back of a first and a fourth.

France’s Jean Baptiste Bernaz slipped one position to sixth and Sweden’s Johan Wigforss was also down one to seventh. Both had seconds with a discard.

Briton Nick Thompson dropped to eighth from fourth and Croatia’s Tonci Stipanovic lifted five placings to ninth with a pair of fourths.

The fleets are now split into Gold, Silver and Bronze with the first races on Thursday, a lay day on Friday and final races on Saturday, ahead of Sunday’s Medal Race.

Top 20 results 

Women’s 470

While Races 5 and 6 of the Women’s 470 competition welcomed new winners today, they have made little change to the overall rankings.

Spain’s Tara Pacheco and Berta Betanzos maintained their hold on the number one position, with Japan’s Ai Kondo and Tabata Wakako retaining second place.

Israel’s Gil Cohen and Vered Buskila took out first place in Race 5, with the No. 13 ranked duo leading from the start. Japan’s Ai Kondo and Wakako Tabato tried hard but were unable to catch up and finished second.

There was a hotly contested clash between several boats for third place, Pacheco and Betanzos narrowly beat France’s Ingrid Petitjean and Nadege Douroux. The race was marked with two general recalls and three Black Flag disqualifications.

Race 6 was anybody’s game until New Zealand ace’s Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie took the lead at the last mark and held it over the line.

Slovenia’s Tina Mrak and Teja Cerne were second over the line in Race 6, closely followed by Skandia Team GBR’s Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark. They now hold seventh, two points astern of Penny Clark and Katrina Hughes in fifth overall.

Top 20 positions

Star

Brazil’s Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada have extended their overall lead to six points thanks to two good results today and their closest competitors failing to place well.

Scheidt and Prada won Race 7, the first for the day, 40 seconds clear and recovered from seventh early in Race 8 to finish third. The Brazilians are now on 30 points, six points clear of the USA’s Mark Mendelblatt and Brian Faith who are second overall.

Mateusz Kusznierewicz and Dominik Zycki from Poland were ranked second on overall points after Tuesday’s competition, but were forced to quit the first race today after receiving a second yellow flag. In third place overall is the German duo, Robert Stanjek and Frithjof Kleen, on 43 points.

Top 20 positions 

Women’s Match Racing

Sailors competing in the Women’s Match Racing quickly put their frustrating wait for the breeze as they moved courses to fight their way through the knockout quarterfinals.

Light winds forced the course to be moved out of Fremantle’s Inner Harbour in search of better breeze on the open water out by Rous Head, much to the delight of the sailors.

“Today was more like real match racing,” the USA’s Anna Tunnicliffe said. “There were much steadier winds and it was so exciting to be out on a new course. It was a great day in the end.”

After the four-hour delay, France’s Claire Leroy, Lucy Macgregor, Russia’s Ekaterina Skudina and Tunnicliffe quickly switched into race mode in the better wind conditions, skippering their boats to victory in their first two respective matches.

With the right side of the course seeming to have more consistent pressure, those who kept to the favoured side had little trouble keeping their lead.

Leroy led from start to finish over Sweden’s Anna Kjellberg in the opening match of Flight 91. Subsequently Lucy Macgregor had little trouble against the Netherland’s Mandy Mulder, Skudina held off Australia’s Olivia Price and Tunnicliffe took victory over Nicky Souter.

A second win to each of the winning boats in the second flight of the day, put the pressure and excitement on Flight 93 with Kjellberg, Mulder, Price and Souter needing to win to keep their semi-final hopes alive.

Kjellberg gave it everything against Leroy from the prestart, maintaining her lead well downwind and rounding the leeward mark ahead. The Swedish skipper was still within attacking distance as Leroy rounded the last mark in front.

With the two boats bow to bow heading for the finish line, Leroy managed to cross first to secure her place in Thursday’s semi-final.

“We’re two steps closer to the trophy now,” the French skipper said. “We are so happy to be going into the semi-finals.”

With her World Championship title hopes on the line, Netherlands skipper Mandy Mulder pounced on Lucy Macgregor’s lead as the British skipper struggled with her spinnaker. With Macgregor then picking up a penalty, Mulder crossed the finish line for her first victory.

Despite starting in good pressure, Olivia Price was unable to hold off her Russian opponent, with Skudina notching up her third victory to progress through to the semi-final.

Nicky Souter briefly kept Australia’s title hopes alive, making things difficult for Tunnicliffe after picked up a penalty early on.

But the world number one skipper managed to take the penalty and then the lead to notch up her third win of the day.

With just one semi-final place remaining Mulder and Macgregor were the only two boats racing in Flight 94, their fourth match up for the day.

Macgregor crossed ahead of Mulder early, covering her loosely up the second windward leg. Despite carrying some nice pressure down the course, Mulder couldn’t get in front, making Macgregor the fourth and final boat through to the semis.

The knockout quarterfinal format saw four head-to-head matches between eight boats in the best of five flights. The first to claim three wins progressed through to the semi-finals.

“We’re feeling good and are excited to finally be in the semi-finals and hopefully be one step closer to that title,” said the British team’s Annie Lush, who admitted they were frustrated to have lost the third match to the Dutch crew.

“It was quite shifty on the last downwind and she caught up a bit, we gybed at her on starboard and the umpires deemed that we didn’t give her enough room to keep clear as our kite hit hers so unfortunately we got a penalty at the bottom of the final run so we didn’t have enough time to get rid of it before the finish line.

“That was a little bit disappointing,” the 31-year-old Lush admitted, “but we cleared our heads and knew that we were better than her, we were beating her around the course in every race, so we went into the final race and sealed it off, so that felt good.”

The Skandia Team GBR trio will face the French team, skippered by Claire Leroy, in Thursday’s semi-final and are in confident form in spite of their intensive schedule.

“We’ve done a LOT of racing over the past ten days! I think we’ve done 35 matches, something like that, but we are in the groove and it feels really good to get that amount of racing in and obviously quite a lot of wins, so we’re feeling good about tomorrow,” Lush said.

“We know Claire well, what she’s good and bad at, and we’ve no idea which conditions we’ll have, whether we’ll be inside or outside the port, whether have waves or it’ll be flat – we’ll just have to wait and see.”

Men’s RS:X

Dutch favourite Dorian van Rijsselberge shares the overall lead with Israel's Nimrod Mashich after light winds plagued the course.

It is close at the top however with just two points separating van Rijsselberge, Mashich and Poland’s Piotr Myszk, who is in third.

The Blue and Yellow fleets had one race apiece, leaving van Rijsselberge and Mashich tied in first place overall while Olympic veteran, Portugal’s Joao Rodrigues, just made it into the top ten in 10th place.

Light winds of less than 10 knots forced race officials to postpone race 5 in the Yellow fleet for almost an hour. A 70-degree wind shift then forced the race to be abandoned after it had started.

Once racing resumed it was Spain’s Ivan Pastor who took the initial lead with France’s Julien Bontemps, Kiwi Jon Paul Tobin and Rodrigues, following in his wake. But in a sharp changeover, Rodrigues overtook while Cyprus’ Andreas Cariolou also caught up.

The race ended with a win for Rodrigues, with Pastor second and Cariolou third while Tuesday’s favourite Nimrod Mashich finished fourth.

World number eight and Greece’s Byron Kokalanis, immediately took charge in the Blue fleet with a clear lead ahead of Myszka and van Rijsselberghe in 11 knot winds.

But when it seemed as though Koklanis was bound for a win, Israel’s Shahar Zubari proved his world number three ranking, cutting in from the outside to join the leading three.

There was a cluster of sailors on the final leg of the race, so much so that it was hard to tell who out of Zubari, van Rijsselberghe, Myszka, Koklanis, France’s Pierre le Coq and British no2 Elliot Carney was leading. But van Rijsselberghe emerged to take first place, closely followed by Myszka in second and Zubari third.

Meanwhile Britain’s Nick Dempsey has still to catch a break. He lies in 20th overall with just one race possible for the fleet in the shifty conditions today, while development squad sailor Elliot Carney continues to hold his own.

Top 20 results