Tom Ashley wins RX-S Mens Worlds 2008

by Sail-World on 19 Jan 2008 A conservatively sailed fourth place in the double point scoring Medal Race sailed off Takapuna today gave 23 year old New Zealander Tom Ashley the 2008 RS:X Mens World Championship ahead of Portugal's Joao Rodrigues and Shahar Zubari of Israel.

Ashley has been knocking hard on the door, but this is his best result as a senior board rider.

When the Mistral was the Olympic Class wind surfing board, Ashley was twice the Mistral under-20 World Champion (2002-2003) and he was the ISAF under-19 World Champion in 2002. He finished seventh at the Mistral Worlds in 2004 but was only 10th at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Then in the switch to the new Olympic RS:X Board Ashley had a good year in 2006, taking the Silver medal at the ISAF World Sailing Games and Silver in the RS:X World Championships.

Today Ashley showed the maturity of a World Champion. By the time the Men hit the startline for the Gold fleet Medal race, the wind had lifted further gusting around 20kts, with reasonably flat seas due to the influence of Rangitito Island.

The conditions were ideal for a medal race at Takapuna. The fresh SE breeze of 20knots allowed the course to be set just off the Takapuna reef, about 100 metres offshore.

Ashley got away to a conservative start in the middle of the 10 strong fleet, and stayed in control of his main opposition to take the title.

Przemyslaw Miarczynski from Poland won the Medal race from Great Britain Nick Dempsey with Kiwi Jon Paul Tobin third, behind him was the overall series leader Tom Ashley who had carefully sailed the course keeping in contact with the leaders but ahead of his main rivals.

Joao Rodrigues finished fifth and that was enough to give him second place overall ahead of Shahar Zubari, who had stumbled to eighth pace.

Provisional Standing Medal Fleet
After Race 10

Pos	Country	Sailnumber	Helmsman | (Crew)	Race 1	Race 2	Race 3	Race 4	Race 5	Race 6	Race 7	Race 8	Race 9	Race 10		Total
1		NZL1	Tom Ashley	3.0	1.0	1.0	1.0	13.0	4.0	3.0	13.0	10.0	8.0		44.0
2		POR75	Joao Rodrigues	18.0	1.0	5.0	10.0	5.0	7.0	7.0	8.0	2.0	10.0		55.0
3		ISR11	Shahar Zubari	1.0	3.0	6.0	17.0	8.0	6.0	9.0	2.0	5.0	16.0		56.0
4		POL126	Przemyslaw Miarczyñski	10.0	11.0	1.0	1.0	21.0	2.0	6.0	7.0	42.0	2.0		61.0
5		ESP7	Ivan Pastor Lafuente	2.0	2.0	3.0	2.0	2.0	35.0	12.0	25.0	6.0	20.0		74.0
6		GBR1	Nick Dempsey	5.0	7.0	12.0	5.0	1.0	17.0	51.0	6.0	18.0	4.0		75.0
7		FRA112	Samuel Launay	14.0	5.0	11.0	6.0	1.0	13.0	15.0	10.0	1.0	14.0		75.0
8		NZL151	Jon Paul Tobin	3.0	4.0	8.0	22.0	15.0	5.0	10.0	4.0	22.0	6.0		77.0
9		POL82	Piotr Myszka	2.0	5.0	2.0	2.0	4.0	33.0	22.0	5.0	55.0	12.0		87.0
10		FRA115	Nicholas Le Gal	4.0	3.0	9.0	6.0	10.0	14.0	8.0	19.0	36.0	18.0		91.0

For the official RSX World Championship website http://www.rsxclass.com/worlds2008.html!click_here and results http://www.theresults.org/rsxworlds/registrations.jsp!click_here