470 European Championship - Belcher and Ryan trumping the fleet

by International 470 Class Association on 13 Jul 2014 470 European Championships 2014 - Athens, Greece. Greek mythology has it that Aeolus is the ruler of the wind, and today the wind was in charge across the race track of the Saronic Gulf.

An 18-20 knot breeze for the first race of the day delivering some exhilarating races – three for the women and two for the men.

Yesterday, the seventy-three boat 470 Men fleet were split into Gold and Silver for the final series of races, ahead of the top 10 Medal Race on Tuesday 15 July 2014. So two races down today and four more to go to decide the 470 Men top 10. The fifty-one boat 470 Women’s fleet are sailing a single series, so continue as one fleet until the Medal Race.

The quality of the racing was described as beautiful today, as the world’s top sailors battle it out round the race track – it really is a spectacle to witness.

Two race wins for Mat Belcher/Will Ryan (AUS) extends their winning margin to 10 points over the second placed team, whilst behind Finland’s Joonas Lindgren/Niklas Lindgren move up to second place swapping with Spain’s Onan Barreiros/Juan Curbelo who drop to third.

Still very early days in this Championship, with another four races scheduled to complete the final series, but Belcher/Ryan are so far trumping the fleet with race wins and consistency. In an amazing display of superiority today, they showed what makes them different. From fifth place at the downwind gate, they headed back upwind, onto the reach and downwind to the finish – by which time they had accelerated to the front and won the race with a 150 metre margin over France’s Sofian Bouvet/Jeremie Mion.

Belcher /Ryan are the defending Open European Champions, with Bouvet/Mion the defending European Champions.

'It doesn’t change things so much in our team,' explained Mion referring to their goal to defend the 2013 European gold medal. 'For sure we want to defend the title, but we will just focus on doing what we know. Since last year, as a team we are more sure about ourselves, because last year was the beginning of being in the top three. But now we have been on a long road for the past year and we won ISAF Sailing World Cup Miami and have been on the podium in a lot of regattas, so we are more confident.'

Bouvet chipped in, 'It was not easy today as we didn’t expect these conditions as we were more expecting a sea breeze or meltemi, but we did well because we didn’t give up. Sometimes we were in 25th place and fought back. In race 6 we were in last place in the first upwind, but we succeeded to never give up and it turned out ok. We were not far from everyone each time, and on the reach we found good shifts and pressure. These conditions are not just about the speed, but the tactics and strategy.'

Heading up the silver fleet are Switzerland’s Yannick Brauchli/Romuald Hausser.

The 470 Men Gold and Silver fleets are scheduled to contest two races on Sunday 13 July 2014, with the first warning signal at 1300 hours for the Gold fleet.

A perfectly executed race day from Austria’s Lara Vadlau/Jola Ogar who will be wearing the yellow leader bibs tomorrow, with a one point advantage over the 2012 Olympic silver medallists Hannah Mills/Saskia Clark (GBR) from their 2,1,8 score. The series discard came into play after race 4, so with teams now able to discard their worst result the leaderboard has switched around a bit. The 2012 Olympic Gold Medallists and reigning World Champions Jo Aleh/Polly Powrie (NZL) have jumped back up to third.

A tough day for the fifty-one boat women fleet with three demanding races in an opening breeze of 16-18 knots and short waves, easing to around 15 knots for the closing two races.

'It was a tough race today and not a second when we weren’t working hard,' commented Vadlau. 'But I think the hard work paid off.'

'The first two races were quite easy for us to read the wind and in the third race the seabreeze came in and it was also OK, but a bit shiftier,' concluded Vadlau.

A misjudged call on a port/starboard incident forced the Austrians into a 720 penalty turn after they crossed the port/starboard incident with the British, and knocked the Austrians back down into eighth place in race 6, a result which Vadlau was hoping would be third before the incident.

Mills/Clark have spent three months out of the boat as they both recover from injury, so a tougher day for them than others.

'Our sailing fitness has taken a bit over the last few months,' said Mills, 'so it was a pretty physical day for us and we are feeling pretty exhausted. Physically in the boat, the first race I was a bit nervous as when it is windy is when my back struggles. A few twinges, but everything held up reasonably well and we soon settled into it and could relax during the race.'

Despite their consistent day the British pair were not happy about their boat handling.

'We made it difficult for ourselves,' laughed Clark. 'In that wind and those waves shows it. So we were on basic hoists and that kind of thing. We struggled a bit which put us in the pack. But it is really good racing. There are some of the younger fleet who weren’t at the Olympics last time who have pulled through the last two year and are becoming really tough competitors, so it is really good.'

The 470 Men Gold and Silver fleets are scheduled to contest two races on Sunday 14 July, with the first warning signal at 1300 hours for the Gold fleet.

470 Men

	SAIL #	BOW	SPONSOR/BOAT	CREW	CLUB	CAT	NET points	TOTAL points	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	AUS 11	5		Mathew Belcher Will Ryan	RQYS, SYC, NRV/RQYS, SYC		9	15	3	6	1	3	1	1
2	FIN 7	9	ROOTS AND CULTURE	Joonas Lindgren Niklas Lindgren	HSK		19	43	4	2	4	2	24	7
3	ESP 9	17	ANYE	Onan Barreiros Juan Curbelo	Real club nautico de gran canaria		22	54	5	8	2	1	6	32
4	GBR 863	3		Luke Patience Elliot Willis	RNCYC/		25	44	4	7	9	1	19	4
5	FRA 27	2		Sofian Bouvet Jeremie Mion	SRA/SRH		30	42	12	1	11	5	2	11
6	CRO 83	1	BRUNA	Sime Fantela Igor Marenic	J.K. Sv. Krsevan		30	44	9	11	3	4	3	14
7	ARG 7	7	PAUL AND SHARK	Lucas Calabrese Juan De La Fuente	Yacht Club Argentino/		31	56	6	6	6	8	25	5
8	AUT 3	14	GERTRUDE	Matthias Schmid Florian Reichstaedter	YCBb		32	52	9	10	5	2	20	6
9	GRE 165	40		Panagiotis Kampouridis Efstathios Papadopoulos	YACHT CLUB OF GREECE/NOKB		35	56	2	13	5	21	13	2
10	GRE 1	6		Panagiotis Mantis Pavlos Kagialis	P.S.C./		39	57	1	18	10	8	7	13
11	SWE 349	4		Anton Dahlberg Fredrik Bergstrom	KSSS		41	70	1	29	18	3	10	9
12	FRA 44	10	EQUIPE DE FRANCE - BANQUE POPULAIRE	Pierre Leboucher Nicolas Le Berre	ASPTT Nantes/CN Plouguerneau		43	60	2	2	16	11	17	12
13	USA 1713	8		Stuart McNay David Hughes	NYYC / Beverly YC/		47	77	8	26	3	7	30	3
14	SWE 350	38		Carl-Fredrik Fock Marcus Dackhammar	gkss /		53	86	11	5	1	5	33	31
15	RUS 2	26		Mikhail Sheremetyev Maksim Sheremetyev	Saint-Petersburg yaht-club		58	83	25	5	6	20	8	19

470 Women

	SAIL #	BOW	SPONSOR/BOAT	CREW	CLUB	CAT	NET points	TOTAL points	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	AUT 431	8	CATALeJA	Lara Vadlau Jolanta Ogar	KYCK		17	27	2	10	4	2	1	8
2	GBR 118	22	THE HONEY BADGER	Hannah Mills Saskia Clark	RTYC/WMYC, DSC		18	24	3	5	1	6	3	6
3	NZL 75	2	KINGSPAN	Jo Aleh Polly Powrie	RNZYS		27	44	5	3	17	11	5	3
4	GBR 321	3	TEAM 3,2,1	Sophie Weguelin Eilidh Mcintyre	lyminton/Hayling Island Sailing Club		28	43	4	12	9	15	2	1
5	USA 1712	4		Anne Haeger Briana Provancha	US Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider/		36	52	1	14	6	16	8	7
6	BRA 177	14		Fernanda Oliveira Ana Barbachan	CBVela		36	51	7	6	3	8	15	12
7	NED 216	7	DELTA LLOYD KERNPLOEG	Afrodite Kyranakou Anneloes Van Veen	Delta Lloyd Kernploeg		52	68	13	9	16	7	12	11
8	RUS 97	11		Alisa Kirilyuk Liudmila Dmitrieva	Moscow SS, CSK VMF /Saratov SS, CSK VMF		53	77	14	7	11	5	24	16
9	SLO 64	5		Tina Mrak Veronika Macarol	JK Pirat Portoroz/JK Pirat Portoroz		54	78	10	20	24	3	19	2
10	ITA 16	13	MOU	Roberta Caputo Alice Sinno	CCAniene		59	104	15	2	19	13	10	45
11	FRA 9	1		Camille Lecointre Helene Defrance	SRBrest - Equipe de france militaire/ASPTT Marseille		64	116	6	UFD	12	12	30	4
12	SUI 5	20	MILLA	Linda Fahrni Maja Siegenthaler	Thunersee Yachtclub/Thunersee Yacgtclub		72	113	18	19	10	41	4	21
13	BRA 18	9		Renata Decnop Isabel Swan	CBVela / RYC		73	104	24	16	31	3	27	5
14	CRO 111	15		Enia Nincevic Romana Zupan	JEDRILICARSKI KLUB USKOK/J.k.Uskok		80	101	17	21	20	19	6	18
15	GER 72	21	OWN THE WIND	Annika Bochmann Karoline Goltzer	VSaW		82	123	22	22	41	9	20	9

Click here for full results

Two races are scheduled for all fleets on Sunday 13 July 2014, with the 470 Men Gold getting underway first with a scheduled warning signal of 1300 hours, followed by the 470 Men Silver and then the 470 Event website