Kiwis win in Finland

Troy Tindell reports on the performance of Laurie Jury's Kiwi Match team at the WASA Open in Finland

Under threat of our publishing photos of his birthday party on the Pindar vessel Hatherleigh during Skandia Cowes Week, young Kiwi blade Troy Tindell writes:

Kiwi Match is an under-25 match racing team helmed by New Zealander Laurie Jury, whose crew consist of Damon Jolliffe, Brad Marsh, Dan McLean and Troy Tindill. This team has been sailing together for three years now and have steadily climbed the ISAF World rankings to place Laurie as third New Zealand helmsman behind Gavin Brady and Russell Coutts and placing them at 47th in the world.

Two weeks ago they placed second in Skandia Youth Cowes Week (the week after Cowes Week proper) and have just won the Finnish open in Wassa.

The team dominated the double round robin, winning all of their matches and after winning the first match in the finals looked set to take it two-nil but they got parked in a whole around the top mark for the last time and as the breeze filled in from behind Johnny Erickson (Finnish national champion) sailed right round Kiwi Match and took the second match.

With it one a-piece going into the final race Kiwi Match stepped up their game and got an early penalty on Erickson in the pre-start and by the top mark had a reasonable lead which Erickson was unable to regain.

Kiwi Match now head for New York where they will be competing in the Knickerbocker Cup in Massachusetts Bay. From there they hope to attain enough sponsorship to compete in Europe later this year.