NZL Sailing Team - Kiwis take 12pt lead into World title defence

by Jody Bakewell-White, Yachting NZ on 21 Nov 2015 Peter Burling and Blair Tuke will take a 12 point lead into the final day of the 49er Sailing World Championships as they attempt to take the 49er crown for 2015 and make it three back to back world titles.

Recently named 2015 ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year Burling and Tuke are in a good position to extend their unprecedented winning streak in the Olympic skiff class. Victory in Argentina would make it 23 consecutive wins in the 49er class.

After no racing was possible on day four of the regatta an early start was scheduled for day five in an attempt to allow for plenty of catch-up racing. Both the men’s and women’s gold fleets sailed four races apiece under sunny skies, but not without light wind interruptions.

“It has been a really long day on the water,” says Peter Burling. “We got one race off before a three hour delay then into the final three races.”

Time spent racing and training in Argentina in the lead-up to the 2015 World Champs highlighted that this was a venue with a unique set of challenges.

Burling and Tuke placed 2nd in what was the opening race of the finals series, then suffered a mid-fleet finish with a 15th in the next. Adding a 9th after that, the kiwis then took a race win to end the day on a high note.

“Today was some of the shiftiest racing we have done in a long time, huge gains and losses,” says Burling. “We were pleased to come away with a solid enough day, all things considered.”

Today’s official report describes the kiwis’ performance; “The leading Kiwis had two poor races by their standards, but even when they were struggling late into races they managed to claw back to post decent poor results instead of disasters.”

The Spanish brother pairing of Federico and Arturo Alonso, described as ‘journeymen’ after ten years in the class, managed to close the gap on Burling and Tuke with four good races today.

Alexandra Maloney and Molly Meech will go into the final day of racing lying 8th overall in the women’s 49erFX Championship. Like their male team-mates their results were mixed and ended on a high - 8, 19, 7, 1.

Currently Denmark’s Ida Marie Nielsen and Marie Olsen are leading from Martine Grael and Kahena Kunze of Brazil.

The schedule for tomorrow is to sail three more finals races for the gold fleets before the top ten in both the 49er and 49erFX duke it out in the medal races.

Meanwhile racing is underway in Oman for the 2015 Laser Radial World Championships where the woman’s single-handed Olympic class sailors will race for their world crown.

NZL Sailing Team representative Sara Winther has opened the regatta with a 16th and an 11th in today’s racing to lie 19th overall in the 100-strong fleet.

2015 49er and 49erFX World Championships:
New Zealand’s current standings Full results click here

49er (61 boats)
1st Peter Burling and Blair Tuke (1, 18, 1, 4, 5, 1, 1, 8, 2, 15, 9, 1)
47th Isaac McHardie and Trent Rippey (28, OCS, 14, 23, 19, 28, 17, 4, 12)
48th Markus Somerville and Aaron Hume-Merry (9, 5, 9, 25, 25, 17, 30, 21, DNC)
61st Logan Dunning-Beck and Jack Simpson (DNC, 30, 30, 29, 13)

49erFX (44 boats)
8th Alexandra Maloney and Molly Meech (12, 11, 4, 9, 6, 3, 11, 4, 8, 19, 7, 1)

2015 Laser Radial World Championship (100 boats)
New Zealand’s current standings Full results click here

19th Sara Winther (16, 11)
35th Susannah Pyatt (5, 32)

Coming up soon…

2015 Finn Gold Cup
Dates: 24-29 November 2015
Venue: Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand
Featuring: Andrew Murdoch, Josh Junior and plenty more local and international sailors

Laser Radial World Championships
Dates: 20-26 November 2015
Venue: Al Mussanah, Oman
Featuring: Sara Winther, Susannah Pyatt