ISAF Sailing Worlds, Santander - Race win gets Scott off the mark

by Lindsey Bell on 17 Sep 2014 Giles Scott got his world title campaign off to the ideal start, winning the first and only race for the Finn class at the ISAF Sailing World Championship in Santander on Tuesday (16 September).

The Spanish venue served up improved conditions on this fifth day of the first Olympic qualification regatta, but still just 23 races of the scheduled 40 were possible as the wind refused to settle for the afternoon fleets, making for a long wait afloat as race committees tried to eke out every opportunity.

Scott, whose Finn class was forced to wait a day to start their event after light winds prevented them from racing on Monday, saw off competition in his race from Danish Olympic silver medallist Jonas Hogh-Christensen and bronze medallist Jonathan Lobert from France to pick up his race win in the Finn blue fleet.

With further racing proving impossible, he ended the day equal first with Australia’s Oliver Tweddell, who took the win in the yellow fleet, while the British Sailing Team’s Ed Wright was ninth in his race.

Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark’s 470 Women’s class managed to complete their programme of two races, with the Olympic silver medallists and 2012 World Champions rounding off their qualifying series in pole position.

'We had two great races,' Mills explained.

'The first one was pretty tricky, totally offshore, and really shifty. Anything could have happened. In the second one the wind had swung left a bit and was a bit more straightforward.'

'We’re just pleased to have got through qualifying without a really big score on the board,' Clark added.

'It means that as we move in to the finals we’ve got a bit of room for error – though not that much as we’re carrying a 14th from the first day.

'For the finals racing, the top half of the fleet are all in together so it gets harder – starting is harder, holding lanes is harder and there’s less space on the race course than we’ve had for the last two days. It really does start from now.'

The RS:X men’s windsurfing fleet needed just one race to complete their qualifying series, and reigning champion Nick Dempsey made it count. He posted a third, and will head in the gold fleet series in third place, level on points with the second-placed Frenchman Pierre Le Coq and just four points off of the yellow jersey.

Nick Thompson broke into the top three positions in the Laser fleet with a confident display of an eighth and a third from his two races. Alison Young crossed fourth in the only race for the Laser Radials, while Chloe Martin is currently the top ranked British sailor in the women’s single-handed class, in seventh overall.

Across the other classes, the split fleets were unable to complete an even number of races, leaving the overnight scores imbalanced.

Luke Patience and Elliot Willis, racing in the 470 Men’s yellow fleet, managed two good scores of 3,6 today, but they’re still short of one race to complete their four-race qualifying series, with the blue fleet two races short.

The 49erFX class got their regatta underway, with Charlotte Dobson-Sophie Ainsworth posting 2,4 from their opening two races, Frances Peters-Nicola Groves picking up 7,12, while Kate Macgregor-Katrina Best’s half of the draw managed three races with the British pairing sandwiching a race win between scores of 17 and 10.

James Peters-Sam Batten saw the best form of the British boats in the 49er blue fleet with 12,6,8 for their efforts, with the yellow fleet unable to race.

The 2013 world silver medallists Ben Saxton-Hannah Diamond opened their World Championship campaign in the Nacra 17 class with a second in their only possible race of the day. Pippa Wilson-John Gimson were fourth, while Lucy Macgregor-Andrew Walsh – racing in the opposite fleet – picked up 17,3 from their two races.

Regatta organisers have once again brought forward the scheduled start time on Wednesday to 1100hrs in a bid to catch up on lost races, with all ten classes in action.

Racing in Santander sees a staggered schedule across the ten classes:

12-18 September: Laser and Laser Radial
13-19 September: RS:X Men and RS:X Women
14-20 September: 470 Men and 470 Women
15-21 September: 49er, 49erFX, Finn and Nacra British Sailing Team