Optimist Worlds Day 2- Report and NZ Coaches View

by Hamish Willcox + Richard Gladwell on 30 Jul 2005 Racing continued for the second day of racing at Silvaplana in the World Optimist Championships.

Clear leader at this stage of the regatta is Tina Lutz (GER) who has been very consistent where others have not, finishing in the top ten places in each of six races sailed, and is the only sailor in the regatta to have achieved this feat. When discards come into play, the positions at the top of the table will close up, however placings on the third day of racing will be critical.

Further down the points table there are some interesting moves from the pre-series favorites. Runner up in the 2004 Worlds Paul Snow-Hansen (NZL) moved up 27 places to lie in 18th overall. However the one to watch is the current World Champion Wie Ni (CHN) who is sitting in 30th place overall, but has two wins and a second in his score - plus an 82nd and a 30th which are pushing him down the table, but will come out when discards come into play. So it is a calculating game that has to be played by these two if they are to feature on the podium at the end of the regatta. Snow-Hansen probably has the biggger task ahead of him and he has several double digit placings in his score - and can't lose all of these with discards.

At the top of the table, the leaders will not be able to stumble and if they start picking up double digit places, then they will come back into the more experienced sailors.

Of the other New Zealanders, Carl Evans sailed consistently, but dropped seven places to lie in 21st overall - still a very good placing in a 246 strong fleet. Daniel Willcox dropped from 32nd overnight to 57th after the second day, with a 77th place in his fourth race pulling his score down - which will improve once discards come into account. Luke Deegan had a good day lifting 30 places from the first day. Jason Saunders dropped 12 places overall to lie 140th - again not too bad considering there are 246 in the fleet and entries are restricted to a maximum of five per country. Like the Olympics - just being here is an achievement in itself.

From NZ Coach Hamish Willcox:

It was a pretty average day for the NZ OP team today.

Again we had the famous thermal winds building up to 17 knots at times with the average about 13. Paul came out and scored third in the first race and Dan had a sixth in the final 6th race. Carl would have been the most consistent with about 25,25,12. He was 14 overall before today.

The results are slow and they only just managed to finish yesterday’s results by early this morning, I guess nine races per day IS hard to digest!

I think there are two factors which make it difficult for the Kiwis. One is the length of the start line, this was about double of what the race committee would set for the same size fleet in NZ. This long line meant that the smart or lucky group that got off the favoured end would make a large jump on the fleet. The 2nd difficulty for the sailors is the fact there is no seaward horizon. This makes it hard for them to see the top mark and therefore sail on the lifted tack.

Today was summarised by long persistent shifts and periods of lighter winds that shifted rapidly. Some of the teams, the Chinese, British, others found consistent form today. I think these teams have spent a large amount of time sailing waters surrounded by land.

Anyway of course we are all so proud of them...even if some of the sailors are disappointed. I keep reminding them that OP sailing is the beginning of their life....not the end!

Remember that the 250 sailors here are the best 250 sailors in the world under 16 years of age! Imagine how happy any of us would be if we could claim to be ranked in the first 250 in another sport- like tennis or whatever.

I would guess that our team is ranked in the top 10 nations for sure right now and that individually i guess Carl to be about 20, Dan and Paul between
25 and 35 and Luke about 45, and Jason about 70. By the way Dan had a blond moment in race 5 capsizing on the downwind....the first time this has happened for a long while.

That’s about it for now. Two more races tomorrow, then the team sailing the following day. NZ must be ranked in the top 15 nations to qualify for the team racing at the end of tomorrow’s races.

C u Hamish

See racing live on www.sporttv.ch

Source: www.kiwispy.com