Photos: Thom Touw

Six straight bullets for Belcher and Page

As France moves ahead in the Women's and more countries qualify at the 470 Worlds

Tuesday May 15th 2012, Author: Luissa Smith, Location: Spain

Tuesday at the 470 World Championships was a tense and enthralling day. Seven nations secured their right to be at the 2012 Olympic Games in the Men's and six in the Women's division continue to fight their way for the remaining five nation places.

All fleets completed two more races to determine the teams proceeding through to the Men's gold, silver and bronze fleets and the Women's gold and silver fleets. The breeze was not quite as strong as forecast, around 10 knots and shifty.

470 Women

After the perfect scoreline of the Dutch over the opening two days, so today it was the turn of the French to move ahead with Camile Lecointre/Matilde Geron leading on 12 points, ahead of team mates Ingrid Petitjean/Nadege Douroux one point behind in second.

Despite last night's bicycle injury, birthday girl Jo Aleh of New Zealand and crew Olivia Powrie still managed to notch up a race win and fourth place to end the qualification series in third overall. “I think it all merges together a bit,” Aleh laughed, referring to her injury, birthday and race win. “I gave myself an early birthday present last night by doing a face plant flip off my bike and decided to grate up my face on the concrete. I spent six hours at Barcelona hospital, which was hard after such a big day on the water yesterday. So yes today, I thought we had to win a race because it was my birthday. It was tricky out there. The wind didn’t do what anyone thought it was going to do and shifted around a lot.”

But where the tension really lies is in the remaining berth left open for London 2012. Five places are available and six nations - Austria, China, Croatia, Denmark, Poland and Russia - have still to qualify.

If Croatia’s Enia Nincevic/Romana Zupan achieve their goal, it will be the first time Croatia has qualified for the 470 Women's class at the Olympic Games. The pair were really disappointed not to secure qualification at Perth 2011. “It has been a very emotional day," Zupan said. "We are feeling great and we hope that we will continue sailing like this. We worked really hard for this, and I think that we managed to correct things that were not good before and we are not afraid of anything that might come our way. We are now second among the nations that are trying to qualify for the Olympics and we hope that the ones behind us will remain there.”

   

Austria's Lara Vadlau/Eva-Maria Schimak were the last of the six teams to make it through to the gold fleet. Alongside her gold medal at last year’s ISAF Youth Worlds, Vadlau also won gold in the one-person dinghy event at the inaugural Olympic Youth Games in 2010. A relieved Vadlau said: “The first moment when we came ashore we were down as we thought it was over, but then I saw my father dancing and I realised that we were still in and have a chance. I hope we can stay in this game as we have sailed well over the last three days. ”

Denmark’s Henriette Koch/Lene Sommer have accelerated their chance of Olympic qualification and are the top placed nation within the gold fleet after a solid 5,2 scoreline today. Koch said, “We are feeling really good. It has been a tough day, but we remain focused on one race at a time.” Sommer added, “I think it is nice to have a good race, we are sailing well and feel in control.”

Top 50 results

Pos Sailno Crew R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 Tot
1 FRA 9 CAMILE LECOINTRE, MATILDE GERON 1 -8 3 5 2 1 12
2 FRA 4 INGRID PETITJEAN, NADEGE DOUROUX 1 -5 4 5 2 1 13
3 NZL 75 JO ALEH, POLLY POWRIE 3 3 -4 2 1 4 13
4 NED 11 LISA WESTERHOF, LOBKE BERKHOUT 6 1 1 1 -7 6 15
5 ISR 311 GIL COHEN, VERED BOUSKILA 7 2 1 1 -10 5 16
6 JPN 1 AI KONDO, WAKAKO TABATA 4 1 5 2 -17 4 16
7 GBR 118 HANNAH MILLS, SASKIA CLARK (bfd) 2 7 7 1 3 20
8 GER 21 KATHRIN KADELBACH, FRIEDERIKE BURNET 2 7 6 4 -12 2 21
9 ESP 696 TARA PACHECO, BERTA BETANZOS 9 4 2 -15 6 6 27
10 DEN 143 HENRIETTE KOCH, LENE SOMMER -14 5 9 9 5 2 30
11 USA 1736 AMANDA CLARK, SARAH LIHAN (bfd) 9 3 3 8 9 32
12 ITA 23 GIULIA CONTI, GIOVANA MICOL 15 3 2 4 9 -19 33
13 ARG 8 FERNANDA SESTO, CONSUELO MONSEGUR 5 7 -9 7 7 8 34
14 BRA 177 FERNANDA OLIVEIRA, ANA BARBACH -10 6 7 10 3 10 36
15 GBR 862 SOPHIE WEGUELIN, SOPHIE AINSWORTH 2 4 11 9 -26 12 38
16 BRA 187 MARTINEE SOFFIATTI GRAEL, MARQUES SWAN 7 6 5 18 4 -20 40
17 CRO 111 ENIA NINCEVIC, ROMANA ZUPAN 6 13 10 -15 6 5 40
18 POL 11 AGNIESZKA SKRZYPULEC, JOLANTA OGAR 4 -15 12 8 9 10 43
19 SWE 348 LISA ERICSON, ASTRID GABRIELSSON 11 10 6 8 11 (bfd) 46
20 SLO 64 TINA MRAK, TEJA CERNE 14 12 13 6 3 -17 48
21 RUS 12 NATALIA IVANOVA, DIANA KRUTSKIKH 8 8 8 12 15 -17 51
22 CHN 616 XU XIAOMEI, YU CHUNYAI 10 10 10 3 -21 20 53
23 CHN 1221 WANG XIAOLI, HUANG XUFENG 12 12 13 -17 4 13 54
24 AUS 1 ELISE RECHICHI, BELINDA STOWELL 5 14 -21 11 10 14 54
25 CHN 1261 FENG HUIMIN, HUANG LIZHU 3 19 14 -20 14 7 57
26 JPN 4321 YUKA YOSHISAKO, NORIKO OKUMA -23 9 8 12 13 18 60
27 AUT 431 LARA VADLAU, EVA MARIA SCHIMAK 15 16 14 6 -18 11 62
28 GRE 17 VIRGINIA KRAVARIOTI, SOFIA PAPADOPOULOU 21 11 11 10 -22 11 64
29 CHN 1211 CAI LIPING, GAO YANG -24 11 12 16 12 15 66
30 GER 61 TINA LUTZ, SUSANN BEUCKE 22 16 (dnf) 11 8 12 69
31 EST 20 MARJALLISA UMB, ELISE UMB -18 14 15 13 14 16 72
32 POL 80 EWA SZCZESNA, IRMINA MROZEK GLISZCZYNSKA 16 15 -19 19 15 9 74
33 CAN 11 DANA ARCHIBALD, KAREN DEXTER 9 22 17 21 -27 7 76
34 RUS 700 VLADA ILIENKO, ELENA KHRYUKINA 16 17 16 13 -20 14 76
35 UKR 93 ANNA KYSELOVA, ANASTASIYA KRASKO (bfd) 21 18 17 19 3 78
36 RUS 97 ALISA KIRILYUK, LIUDMILA DMITRIEVA 17 18 15 25 5 (bfd) 80
37 GBR 853 ANNA BURNET, FLORA STEWART 17 17 16 14 16 -21 80
38 ITA 52 FRANCESCA KOMATAR, SVEVA CARRARO 19 -21 17 14 13 18 81
39 SUI 14 STEPHANIE HASLER, ROMY HASLER -25 13 19 22 22 8 84
40 GRE 8 DIMITRA PAGIDA, DANAI PASCHOU 19 20 21 -22 11 16 87
41 UKR 7 ANASTASIIA KOLOMIIETS, OLEKSANDRA CHICHEROVA (bfd) 23 18 16 18 13 88
42 GBR 849 JOANNA FREEMAN, KATIA TOMSETT 11 19 -22 21 17 22 90
43 SIN 1 DAWN LIU, SARA TAN 8 20 26 19 24 (bfd) 97
44 SUI 12 FIONA TESTUZ, ANNE-SOPHIE THILO 21 18 20 18 20 -25 97
45 RUS 5 VIKTORIA SHUVALOVA, IRINA EROKHINA 12 23 22 24 21 (bfd) 102
46 FRA 22 CASSANDRE BLANDIN, CHARLOTTE MERY 13 -25 23 20 25 22 103
47 ITA 16 ROBERTA CAPUTO, GIULIA PAOLILLO 18 -24 20 23 19 23 103
48 HUN 1286 FANNI PÉCH, ESZTER HÉJJ 20 24 23 -25 23 15 105
49 BUL 243 YANA MARKOVA, IVA NEDEVA 22 -27 24 26 16 21 109
50 POL 53 MADELEINE ZIELINSKA, NADIA ZIELINSKA 13 26 24 -27 25 24 112

470 Men

A new 470 World Championship record performance is on the cards from the Australian defending World Champions Mat Belcher and Malcolm Page, who notched up another more two victories to make it six bullets in six races. An unprecedented achievement, but the team remain respectfully modest.

“Today was another great day for us, rounding out qualifying with a perfect scorecard, six wins from six races,” said Belcher. “We’re obviously really happy with our performance across a range of conditions.”

Page said that the pair was very pleased with how their World Championship defence had started. “You’ve got to take days like these whenever you can. This is definitely the first time that Mat and I have won six straight races at a World Championship and the first time that I know of in the 15 or 16 years that I’ve been following the class. Our coach Victor doesn’t know of any times when it’s happened while he’s been involved in the sport so that stretches it out to about 25 years which all three of us are thrilled with.”

While the scoreboard may look like the pair is doing it easy at the front they had to fight for both wins on Tuesday. “Today was really tricky and we certainly had our fair share of luck to come away with the win in race five,” said Belcher. “We were fighting hard down the run and second work after rounding in around 13th to catch the leaders. The wind shifted in our favour and we managed to position ourselves to take full advantage and just got the win from the Israelis. In the three to eight knot southeasterly breeze we had today anything can really happen so to have this consistency has been great.”

On Wednesday the 2012 470 World Championship enters the finals series with the top crews facing off against each other for the first time.

“While we’ve had a great run so far our streak is certainly going to end tomorrow with the first day of finals,” said Belcher. “Things will certainly get interesting with everyone fighting hard. We only have a six point buffer and you can lose that on a bottom mark rounding so we have plenty still to do.”

Belcher and Page currently lead Portuguese pair Alvaro Marinho and Miguel Nunes by six points with Finnish crew Joonas and Niklas Lindgren a point further behind.

“These regattas are won and lost in gold fleet racing,” said Page. “We haven’t made a wrong step so far but the top five or six boats will probably be saying the same thing. We’re starting from scratch tomorrow and you could say that the marathon is only just reaching it’s middle point so we’ve got to be patient and take each race as it come."

In 470 Men, Olympic nation qualification is now wrapped up after six races to deliver the final seven nations who have qualified to be at London 2012. The team having the day of their lives was Chile’s Benjamin Grez/Diego Gonzalez who went into today in 42nd overall and 10 places off the gold fleet cut. Some superb racing rewarded them with two top five finishes and national qualification, which will see Chile making their first Olympic appearance in the 470 since 1984.

Joining Chile in securing nation qualification to the 2012 Olympic Games (subject to ISAF ratification) are Canada, Ireland, Korea, Russia, Turkey and South Africa.

The highest placed team to secure nation qualification were Korea’s Gunwoo Park/Sungmim Cho who ended the qualification series in 14th overall. A thrilled Park said after racing, “The wind was lighter than we expected, but our speed wasn’t too bad and we chose the right side of the course, so we had a good race. This is my first time to be at the Olympic Games. I am so proud and happy to be able to represent Korea.”

On the leaderboard, South Africa was the final of the seven nations to qualify and, with points margins extremely close, their celebrations were on hold until all the protests had been dealt with, giving an anxious wait for Jim Asenathi and Roger Hudson. The pair spent much of the evening patiently sitting outside the race office waiting to receive the final nod, before they could really celebrate. Their story is impressive as the pair only teamed up together just over a year ago. Hudson admitted the day was tough, commenting, “we really struggled in race 4 and had a discard. We were having a great race 6 and picked up from about 9th in the first rounding to 7th and then had a disaster in the last run to finish 15th. It was devastating as we knew that could affect the outcome for qualification.”

For Asenathi today was a dream come true. “I am speechless to be honest, but I am really happy. We worked so hard to get here and this means a lot to me and shows the hard work we have put in. We are continuing to improve on the technical side of the boat and race faster."

Meanwhile several teams are having their own in house battles to determine who will be selected for the Olympics. This includes Greece's Panagiotis Mantis/Pavlos Kagialis and Panagiotis Kampouridis/Esfstathios Papadopoulos and Japan's Ryunosuke Harada/Yugo Yoshida and Tetsuya Matsunaga/Kimhiko Imamura.

Top 50 results

Pos Sailno Crew R1 R2 R3 R4 R5 R6 Tot
1 AUS 11 MATHEW BELCHER, MALCOLM PAGE -1 1 1 1 1 1 5
2 POR 1 ALVARO MARINHO, MIGUEL NUNES 5 2 2 1 -12 1 11
3 FIN 7 JOONAS LINDGREN, NIKLAS LINDGREN 3 3 1 4 1 -9 12
4 CRO 83 SIME FANTELA, IGOR MARENIC 5 1 4 1 -7 4 15
5 FRA 44 PIERRE LEBOUCHER, VICENT GAROS 1 3 -9 3 3 7 17
6 ISR 7 GIDEON KLIGER, ERAN SELA 6 (bfd) 3 5 2 2 18
7 GRE 1 PANAGIOTIS MANTIS, PAVLOS KAGIALIS 2 2 6 4 -9 4 18
8 ARG 7 LUCAS CALABRESE, JUAN DE LA FUENTE 4 6 2 -12 2 7 21
9 NZL 212 PAUL SNOW-, JASON SAUNDERS (bfd) 6 7 3 2 5 23
10 JPN 4 RYUNOSUKE HARADA, YUGO YOSHIDA -7 4 4 6 4 6 24
11 GRE 165 PANAGIOTIS KAMPOURIDIS, ESFSTATHIOS PAPADOP 8 4 8 2 -14 3 25
12 AUS 13 SAM KIVELL, WILL RYAN 2 7 5 6 5 -11 25
13 ESP 9 ONAN BARREIROS, AARON SARMIENTO 8 3 5 2 -10 9 27
14 KOR 111 GUNWOO PARK, SUNGMIM CHO 10 4 -14 6 5 4 29
15 FRA 27 SOFIAN BOUVET, VINCENT GUILLARM 1 -9 7 8 8 6 30
16 CAN 618 LUKE RAMSAY, MIKE LEIGH 22 2 1 4 -24 10 39
17 FRA 7 NICOLAS CHARBONNIER, JÉRÉMIE MION 7 1 11 12 10 -24 41
18 NED 1 SVEN COSTER, KALEN COSTER -20 9 12 2 14 5 42
19 USA 1713 STUART MCNAY, GRAHAM BIEHL -23 10 8 14 7 3 42
20 GER 10 FERDINAND GERZ, PATRICK FOLLMANN -25 5 7 9 11 10 42
21 RUS 2 MIKHAIL SHEREMETYEV, MAXIM SHEREMETYEV 14 5 2 7 15 -22 43
22 JPN 12 TETSUYA MATSUNAGA, KIMIHIKO IMAMURA 12 12 5 11 3 -15 43
23 IRL 22 GER OWENS, SCOTT FLANIGAN 5 9 9 10 10 -13 43
24 ITA 29 SIMON SIVITZ KOSUTA, JAS FARNETI -13 11 11 8 6 8 44
25 AUT 3 MATTHIAS SCHMID, FLORIAN REICHSTAEDTER 16 6 3 5 17 -18 47
26 TUR 890 DENIS CINAR, ATES CINAR -17 7 10 7 14 9 47
27 CHI 11 BENJAMIN GREZ, DIEGO GONZALEZ 16 11 -18 14 3 5 49
28 RSA 10 ASENATHI JIM, ROGER HUDSON 10 13 4 7 -22 15 49
29 GRE 10 VASILEIOS PAPOUTSOGLOU, LOANNIS ORFANOS 4 15 12 9 9 (dsq) 49
30 AUT 437 DAVID BARGEHR, LUKAS MÄHR 4 -18 13 17 15 1 50
31 ITA 5 GIULIO DESIDERATO, NICOLA PITANTI 9 11 14 -15 1 15 50
32 CHN 181 WEI WANG, DAO DENG -30 8 3 5 7 28 51
33 ITA 22 NICOLO BERTOLA, DANILO ALCIDI 12 15 15 -21 8 2 52
34 JPN 4423 HIROKI MAEDA, EISUKE NORO 12 12 9 -13 13 6 52
35 UKR 67 YURII ZHURALOW, PAVLO MATCUEV 6 14 15 -16 13 8 56
36 FRA 6 VIANNEY GUILBAUD, MATHIEU FOUNTAINE 21 (bfd) 8 9 17 2 57
37 ARG 11 FRANCISCO SUCARI, FRANCISCO RENNA 3 14 -20 19 9 12 57
38 GER 5025 JULIAN STÜCKL, OLIVER SZYMANSKI 6 17 -21 15 6 13 57
39 ITA 25 FRANCESCO FALCETELLI, GABRIELE FRANCIOLINI 19 -23 15 18 4 3 59
40 GER 55 JASPER WAGNER, DUSTIN BALDEWEIN 14 5 6 10 (bfd) 24 59
41 FRA 34 GABRIEL SKOCZEK, ACHILE NEBOUT -19 10 13 14 5 17 59
42 SUI 16 YANNICK BRAUCHLI, ROMUALD HAUSSER 17 8 (dsq) 3 21 11 60
43 SLO 21 MITJA MIKULIN, SEBASTIAN PRIN 16 (dsq) 6 13 11 16 62
44 RUS 7 VLADIMIR CHAUS, DENIS GRIBANOV 9 16 13 -24 20 8 66
45 POR 7 ANTONIO MATOS, RICARDO SCHEDEL 8 21 -23 16 12 10 67
46 NED 77 STEVEN LE FEVRE, STEVEN KROL 18 7 10 13 25 (ocs) 73
47 SUI 7 OLIVER GREMAUD, ADRIEN GREMAUD 10 12 22 12 -23 17 73
48 BRA 37 FABIO PILLAR, GUSTAVO THIESEN 13 (bfd) ocs 8 4 16 74
49 DEN 158 HENRIK SØGAARD, MADURO NØRBO -28 15 24 17 6 12 74
50 AUS 3 SCOTT COTTON, ROB SIZE 13 18 10 19 -20 17 77

 

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