Brits win, Australians upset in 49er Worlds

by Virginia Page on 14 Jul 2007 The second Gold of the 2007 ISAF Worlds for Great Britain. Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes (GBR) became 49er ISAF World Champions 2007 today after an exciting Medal Race in Cascais while Australian’s Nathan Outteridge, the youngest 49er helm in the gold fleet with his crew Ben Austin, stole the bronze podium position from Pietro Sibello and Gianfranco Sibello (ITA).

Nico Delle-Karth and Nikolaus Leopold (AUT) held on to the silver medal.

Starting with an 11-point lead and against in the ten-boat fleet, the double points available ensured that only the top four crews were able to challenge for gold. Having led the regatta from the start with their consistent results, Morrison and Rhodes’ performance today was an impressive display of boat handling confidence.

'There was a fairly big wind shift before the start,' explained Morrison. 'We didn’t do a great job at executing our port tack but we were able to get clear and sail our own race from there on. After the first 30 seconds we felt a little more comfortable with things.

'We’ve been working over the winter to make sure our boat handling, our communication, our rig set up is all good so that when it comes under pressure it stays solid. I think that the hundreds of hours that we’ve put in over the winter have really paid off.'

As main rivals on the water, Morrison and Rhodes covered the Austrians Delle - Karth and Leopold and the Italian Sibello brothers well, rounding the first mark in eight place. Choosing the left hand buoy at the mark rounding paid off for the British team and promoted them to fifth place by the second windward mark.

Morrison continued, 'We just had to be sensible today. We were expecting the wind off the land as with the rest of the week. We were going to just sail our own race because tactics are hard when it’s so shifty. But when it came to it, the wind was much steadier we had more opportunity to use the 11 points that we had. That was a comfortable buffer to say focused on the Austrians and Italians were our only threat.'

In 6 knots of light and patchy wind, the fleet started up the first leg in almost reverse order according to the placing following the gold fleet racing.

Morgan Larson and Pete Spaulding (USA) led for the entire race, finishing first and propelling themselves from tenth to fifth place in the overalls standings.

Outteridge, having only moved into 49ers in 2005, spoke of his game plan and delight at the result, 'We were looking for a clear start. It was good but we were slow off the start. We were about fifth or sixth for almost the whole race with the Austrians and Italians behind us which is where they needed to be if we were to stand a chance for a medal.

'We were pretty much watching all the boats at all times, making sure that we stayed in our position. We were hoping to make Gold fleet last year and we made sixth and this year we were hoping for top ten and we made the podium which is fantastic. Hopefully we can do it again!'