Images from Marseilles International Match Racing - Day 1

by Gilles Martin-Raget on 13 Mar 2009
Top international yachting photographer www.martin-raget.com!Gilles_Martin-Raget provided these images from the training day and first day of match racing at Marseilles.

Yesterday was blown out. Today was light winds.

From the website: www.MIMR.fr

At 9.30 the crews left the quay to go out and play next to the coast in Marseille’s southern bay.

Who would have believed that after yesterday’s 30 knots which prevented any racing taking place, today would witness the opposite. Just 6 knots NW meant that it wasn’t before 11am that the first duel, between Mathieu Richard and Ian Ainslie could open the show.

Eight flights in a day, a great start for the teams who had been champing at the bit for two days in Marseilles.

Quotes from the skippers:

Paolo Cian

After winning a straight seven matches today, you could see the satisfaction in the Italian skipper’s eyes. But what was his secret?

'There are days when everything falls together smoothly and logically.

The weather conditions today allowed us the time to prepare each race well and size up the course. Our tactician did a great job, giving us the right info at the right time and the rest followed naturally.

I’m very happy with the results which, I hope, will be good for the rest of the competition.'

Ed Baird:

'I’m really happy to be back in Marseille, for this first stage of teh WMRT. Congratulations to Paolo Cian and his crew for their rgeat performance. We also won all our matches but with only three raced.

We sailed well but it was tough. For me, a good match is a pole position start, good tactics, good sailing to stretch the lead … and victory at the finishing line!'

Ian Williams

Mixed results for the reigning World Champion.

'We were not lucky today, and despite being well placed in our matches we didn’t always make the best strategic choices.'