IFDS Disabled Sailing Combined World Championships day one

by Lindsey Bell on 4 Jul 2011 IFDS Disabled Sailing Combined World Championships 2011 began today (3rd July) and will conclude on Friday, 8th July. There are a total of 11 races scheduled for each class with two races per day Sunday-Thursday and a single race on Friday.

Britain’s sailors got off to a flying start with Alexandra Rickham and Niki Birrell opening up their SKUD class world title defense at the 2012 sailing venue with the perfect score line of two race wins. Weymouth and Portland served up light wind conditions for this first day of competition, leading to a postponed start to the six-day Championships.

But when racing in the three Paralympic classes did get underway in five to seven knots in the early afternoon, the two-time World Champions Rickham and Birrell were quick out of the blocks, with Skandia Team GBR’s 2.4mR sailors and the Sonar trio of John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas also getting a solid start to the event, which forms part of the British selection trials for the 2012 Paralympic Games.

Rickham and Birrell, who won the world title in the two-person class in 2009 and 2010, won the first of Sunday’s races by a leg, and a greater margin of over three minutes in race two to sit them on top of the leaderboard after day with and with confidence high.

'We hoped for it, we dreamt of it and apparently it came true!' said 29-year-old helm Rickham of their start to the regatta.

'We’re happy with the way everything has gone today – I think we made sure we kept everything very, very simple. We stuck to our plans – we had plan! – and it’s all come good. We’re really happy that we put together a decent start to the series. 'We’d looked at Sail for Gold where we came second and knew we had a couple of areas where we needed to improve so we’ve worked on that over the past couple of weeks with our coach,' added Birrell.

'We just tried to do what we’ve been practicing for the past couple of weeks, stick to our processes which we did, and we managed to get the perfect score line today. 'We’ve still got five more days to go, so I can’t get too excited – we’ll see what it looks like on Friday night.'

Helena Lucas tops the leader board after two races in the one-person 2.4mR event, with Megan Pascoe also poised in third. Lucas picked up a third in the opening race of the regatta, but was left fighting back through the fleet in the second race after a difficult first windward leg to finish in fourth. 'I’m really happy – it was tricky conditions out there and the first beats didn’t go quite as well as I’d have liked them to have gone and left me playing a little bit of catch up,' explained Lucas.

'But some really good decisions on both runs of both races got me back in the hunt and two good results with a three and a four so I’m really pleased with that.'

Pascoe, the 2010 bronze medallist, scored an eighth and a second for her opening day, and was also in confident mood following her opening day, which sees her two points behind the second-placed American Mark Leblanc. 'I was very consistent, which was nice. It was a very difficult day – the wind wasn’t quite playing ball, but I had some really good starts and some really good beats,' she explained.

The Skandia Team GBR Sonar trio of John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas had a tough start to their regatta, recovering to sixth after a falling the wrong side of a wind shift in the opening race of their event. They fought their way through from the high teens to finish in sixth, before clinching third in their second race of the day to see them in third place overall on the leader board.

'We had a good start [in race one] and then the wind clocked right a little bit and there was a bit more pressure on the other side from where we were basically,' said helm Robertson.

'We ended up pretty deep – sort of in the high teens and just had to use the rest of the race to fight back and we ended up sixth. That was a reasonable start and we didn’t completely throw it away! 'We had a better start [in race two] and went with the fleet and were going pretty fast through the water as well so it was quite a good race. At the end we just sneaked a third – it was a bit of a blanket finish between six or seven boats so it was quite tight, but we did that job on that one.'

'I wouldn’t say we were mega happy with our start, but we didn’t exactly blow it. It was a good, solid start which is all you can ask for in those conditions.'

Racing at the IFDS Disabled Sailing Combined World Championships continues until Friday 8 July. There are 11 races in total scheduled for each class (two races per day Sunday-Thursday and one race on Friday 8 July).

Skandia Team GBR squad for the IFDS Disabled Sailing World Championships :

Name Born Place of Birth Lives

SKUD18 (two-person keelboat)

Niki Birrell 16/08/86 Manchester Knutsford
Alexandra Rickham 11/09/1981 Kingston, Jamaica Epsom, Surrey

2.4mR (one-person keelboat)

Megan Pascoe 29/11/1986 Shoreham-by-Sea Portland
Helena Lucas 29/04/1975 Redhill, Surrey Southampton

Sonar (three-person keelboat)

John Robertson 11/02/1972 North Haven, Sunderland Portland
Hannah Stodel 27/08/1985 Colchester West Mersea
Stephen Thomas 05/01/1977 Bridgend Cardiff

Skandia Team GBR website