Detroit Cup 2012 - Canfield and Junior to face off in Finals tomorrow

by Luis Kahl on 26 Aug 2012 With another day of long delays and an uncertain forecast for tomorrow, organizers of the Bayview YC’s decided to accelerate the event timetable and skip straight from the Round Robin to the Semi-Finals, yielding two finalists today in Day Three of the Detroit Cup. This ISAF Grade 2 event is the second stop of the four-event US Grand Slam series.

Repeating his winning performance at last week’s August Grade 2 Invitational, Taylor Canfield from the US Virgin Islands once again dominated the Round Robin by winning every match.

He looked to continue this momentum into the Semi-Finals, but got stopped in the second match by David Gilmour from Australia, who qualified for the Semi’s on a three-way tie-break with Nicolai Sehested from Denmark and fellow Australian Jordan Reece.

'We thought we did a good job at controlling the pre-start,' said Canfield, 'but just had no speed to hold off Gilmour.

After the match we backed down and saw a big clump of weed come off the keel.'

But Canfield quickly recovered to win the third match in the first-to-two point series, and thus earn his place in tomorrow’s Finals.

The other Semi-Final match saw Josh Junior from New Zealand dominate every pre-start and lead from start to finish in his matches with Stephanie Roble from the US. Roble yesterday won every match to close her Round Robin series in second place, but had to sit out until Semi-Final racing started today at 5:30 local time.

'In one sense it was nice to have the day off,' said Roble, 'we did some shopping around town, but on the other hand it was hard to get back into the rhythm we had yesterday.' Roble will meet Gilmour in a first-to-two point series in tomorrow’s Petit-Finals race for third place.

Junior will meet Canfield in a first-to-three point Final series, with the Kiwi team from Wellington feeling confident. 'We feel we have been going better and better and better, so we’re looking forward to tomorrow’s matches.'

Racing resumes tomorrow an hour later at 10:00 AM EDT. The weather forecast for tomorrow is a carbon copy of today, with clear skies but little pressure in the gradient breeze as a strong high pressure system continues to dominate the eastern half of the US.

Live commentary will be provided on site by match race commentator Dobbs Davis, with video livestreaming on the internet provided by Isao Toyoma.

For more information, results and photos from the Detroit Cup, visit http://www.detroitcup.com