Mirsky Racing Team's Kyle Langford busy during WMRT hiatus

by Mirsky Racing Team media on 1 Aug 2009 Mirsky Racing Team's 19 year old tactician and main trimmer, Kyle Langford recently competed in the 49er World Championships held in Lake Garda, Italy.

Kyle crewed for another young Perth sailor, Steve Thomas who has shown great potential in all Olympic classes over the years, and is now the defending two times 29er World Champion.

With Langford’s commitments to MRT, the pair was unable to fit in much training amongst the already busy schedule. However, they did manage to get to Sydney to take part in a week long training camp with the Australian Sailing Team’s Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen who went on to take out the World Championship title.

'It was good to line up against the best in the world straight away and see how much work we had to do' said Langford after stepping on the boat for the first time.

After a tough first day, it became clear that the only thing that was going to let this duo down was their boathandling. The Australian pair lead the first race, and were coming comfortably second in the second race, but both times small errors saw them buried deep in the fleet.

Missing out on qualifying for the Gold fleet by 10 points, the pair fought it out in the Silver fleet and secured two top ten places in the first races of the day, however in the third race there was a big collision which tore their rudder in half and forced them to retire early.

'It was a great experience to have to sail in such a competitive fleet' said Kyle who finished 41st overall. 49er sailing is a lot different to the Match racing circuit and it was good for my own personal experience to sail a dinghy again. It was unfortunate that we didn’t reach our full potential but it was great to complete on the Olympic sailing scene and see how they operate. It will now be very interesting to see the 49er Gold Medallists from Denmark competing in the Danish Open this September.'