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470 World Championship Medal Races - New pairings come good

by Sailing lntelligence on 30 Aug 2009
Sime Fantela and Igor Marenic - 470 World Championship 2009 Per Heegaard – www.heegaardfotografi.dk
While the rain gods held off all week, the medal races for the 470 World Championship took place today, run by the Royal Danish Yacht Club off Rungsted harbour, in conditions varying so wildly that Beijing Gold medallist Malcolm Page described them as 'like four seasons rolled into one'.

And so, following today’s double points scoring Medal races for the top ten placers in each event, men and women, Croatia’s Šime Fantela and Igor Marenic are the new Men’s 470 World Champions, while the ever consistent Dutch women, Lisa Westerhof and Lobke Berkhout, have won this year’s World title in the Women’s event.

Going into the medal race, the Croatian men were looking comfortable in the Gold spot with a 16 point lead over the second placed Japanese, Ryunosuke Harada and Yugo Yoshida, winners of this year’s European championship.

The main fight was on for the remaining podium spots with the Japanese separated by just two points from the Netherland’s Sven and Kalle Coster, the class act earlier this week, and the fledgling British duo of Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell.

With the wind initially out of the west, the unpredictable offshore breeze the sailors dislike, racing got underway for the Men shortly before 1500 local time. The race, held on the shorter medal race course, closer to land, turned into a nailbiter with the lead changing on the first three legs.

On the first upwind, the Costers chose the extreme right while the British were furthest out to the left and narrowly led around the top mark. On the downwind Spain’s Onan Barreiros and Aaron Sarmiento had taken the lead, while a big left hand shift on the second beat saw Australians Matt Belcher and Malcolm Page surge up to first, which they never relinquished.

The Croatians finishing immediately behind them was enough to secure their Gold, while a solid fourth place for Patience and Bithell allowed them to take silver, tied on points with the Japanese Harada and Yugo Yoshida, who moved down to the final spot on the podium.

While they made it look easy Fantela said the race was about as tense as could be. 'We went out in 20 knots and the shower came with 35 knots and then there was no wind and then we started in light winds. So it was hard, really hard.'

But it wasn’t only the varied conditions putting knots in his stomach. 'The race was not so sure for us, because I thought we were OCS on the start. We had a good start and the opening of the race was really good, but because I thought we were OCS, I started to watch where were our opponents – the Japanese, Costers and the British.

Then when the British rounded first and we rounded seventh with the Japanese and the Costers behind us, it wasn’t so good because I was thinking if ‘we are OCS and he is first – we lose!’ Then when we got to the finish I saw we were not OCS and I was really, really happy. I feel really good, really good now,' said Fantela, once he’d arrived back at the Rungsted harbour slipway to be showered with congratulations from both his team and rivals.

Most surprising was the result of the 23 year olds Patience and Bithell, one of the youngest teams in the Skandia Team GBR Men’s 470 squad. They pulled up two places in the medal race to take silver, despite being such a new pairing that they had only sailed for five days prior to embarking on this World Championship.

'I am ecstatic. I can’t believe it. I really am happy, with hopefully more to come…' said Patience, the beaming Scot. 'We went in with all to gain and nothing to lose. We said to each other ‘we are just racing our race and we’ll just go and do what we are good at’. We were more than confident that we could come away with silver today in a medal race that was tight and small and offshore. It was one of those races where people do whacky things and try to go for all or nothing. So that went in our favour.'



But the class act of this 470 World Championship has been another new pairing: that of the Netherland’s Lisa Westerhof and Lobke Berkhout. They went into today’s medal race with a commanding lead, only to win it, thereby coming out with the lowest score across both fleets – just 36 points, 24 ahead of the second placed young Spanish crew, Tara Pacheco and Berta Betanzos, while French long term campaigners Ingrid Petitjean and Nadège Douroux retained bronze.

Despite having led this championship from the outset, the Dutch duo were over the moon to have won their first Worlds. Both are seasoned campaigners, Westerhof representing the Netherlands at the Olympic Games in Athens, where she finished ninth, and Berkhout, a twice world champion, who picked up silver in Beijing last year.

'This is awesome. We wanted it SO SO much,' said Westerhof, literally jumping up and down for joy on the slipway. 'This was not our goal. Our goal was to get close to the top sailors in the world. We started really really well and sailed a very consistent series and then a medal race like this which we won by really really far – it is great.'

As to why they had done so well so early on in their campaign for the 2012 Games, Westerhof explained: 'Two good sailors, a good coach, we had a good structure, we were working together really well….and there is still so much room for improvement still, as we only just got together, like communication and making decisions and who decides what – we are still finding things out and we’ll make sure we work really hard from now on. We’re not going to sit back and relax. We are going to push it through and make sure.'



The majority of the sailors in this World Championship are soon to be heading for Weymouth in the UK for the Sail For Gold Regatta over 14-19 September.

Next year’s World Championship takes place over 9-18 July 2010 in The Hague in the Netherlands.

2009 470 Men's World Championship 
Rungsted 20-29 August 2009 
Results 470 MEN 
Scores take into account 1 discard 
No  Sailno  Name  Scores  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
1 CRO 83  Fantela Šime, Marenic Igor  58,0  3 2 1 1 6 7 8 8 13 -16 4 1 2
2 GBR 834  Patience Luke, Stuart Bithell  80,0  12 5 4 4 9 15 1 6 -30 7 7 2 4
3 JPN 4340  Harada Ryunosuke, Yoshida Yugo  80,0  2 5 12 2 6 3 (bfd )  2 8 9 3 18 5
4 NED 1  Coster Sven, Coster Kalle  85,0  1 9 3 1 2 1 -22 7 16 11 10 10 7
5 AUS 11  Belcher Matthew, Page Malcolm  91,0  7 5 8 3 2 5 -14 11 9 14 12 13 1
6 AUT 3  Schmid Matthias, Reichstaedter Florian  91,0  14 1 2 3 3 2 17 17 11 1 14 -25 3
7 FRA 44  Leboucher Pierre, Garos Vincent  92,0  4 11 4 4 1 6 (bfd )  27 2 10 8 3 6
8 ESP 9  Barreiros Onan, Sarmiento Aaron  104,0  10 7 6 11 14 1 2 9 1 (dnf )  5 16 dsq 
9 ARG 7  Calabrese Lucas, De la Fuente Juan  110,0  4 19 5 8 7 7 9 -25 12 6 13 4 8
10 GRE 1  Mantis Panagiotis, Kagialis Pavlos  120,0  11 8 11 13 1 16 (bfd )  22 3 2 2 9 ocs 
11 ISR 7  Kliger Gidi, Gal Udi  118,0  6 4 2 14 5 18 (bfd )  4 14 5 6 29 1
12 AUS 13  Kivell Sam, Ryan Will  131,0  3 2 1 14 4 6 10 -30 23 19 11 19 9
13 ITA 4  Luca Dubbini, Roberto Dubbini  131,0  1 3 9 5 15 10 7 -31 10 22 21 7 11
14 NZL 212  Snow-Hansen Paul, Saunders Jason  133,0  6 4 9 6 8 2 (bfd )  5 5 20 31 21 6
15 SUI 11  Buhler Matias, Steiger Felix  134,0  3 1 3 3 3 6 (bfd )  20 17 15 25 5 bfd 
16 GBR 841  Rogers Nick, Green Pom  136,0  9 3 4 2 6 20 (bfd )  23 4 26 17 8 4
17 FRA 7  Charbonnier Nicolas, Meyer Baptiste  138,0  5 2 1 6 8 10 21 13 31 28 1 12 (bfd) 
18 GBR 828  Asher Nic, Willis Elliot  138,0  1 3 5 26 3 (ocs )  16 3 25 4 19 20 3
19 GBR 846  Saxton Ben, Kohler David  148,0  11 7 2 9 9 3 5 28 19 13 -30 17 15
20 RUS 2  Sheremetiev Mikhail, Sheremetiev Maxim  154,0  12 8 6 5 11 11 19 15 24 17 -28 11 5
21 USA 1713  McNay Stuart, Biehl Graham  155,0  5 7 3 9 7 1 (bfd )  10 18 27 22 23 13
22 FRA 27  Bouvet Sofian, Mion Jeremie  160,0  5 6 14 17 14 15 20 1 21 3 -26 24 10
23 NZL 198  Woolley Geoffrey, Overington Mark  161,0  8 11 7 2 18 13 12 18 6 25 15 26 (bfd) 
24 SWE 341  Dahlberg Anton, Ostling Sebastian  162,0  2 9 11 10 12 2 13 16 20 -24 23 22 12
25 NED 77  Le Fevre Steven, Krol Steven  162,0  11 4 9 18 2 4 (bfd )  26 26 12 18 6 16
26 ESP 1868  Santurde Pablo, Ramos Alejandro  173,0  9 8 13 1 16 3 11 12 29 23 20 28 (bfd) 
27 GRE 165  Kambouridis Panagiotis, Orologas Gerasimos  173,0  8 11 7 11 9 24 18 -29 22 8 16 27 2
28 ESP 7  Medina Jose Antonio, Jover Emilio  179,0  7 10 24 12 10 4 4 (bfd )  15 30 32 14 7
29 GER 49  Zellmer Lucas, Seelig Heiko  185,0  10 1 27 18 1 5 (bfd )  14 28 21 27 15 8
30 GER 17  Hauptmann Martin, Chorrosch Timo  189,0  16 14 10 8 12 9 3 21 27 29 9 31 (bfd) 
31 FRA 21  Rossignol Alexandre, Boudgourd David  195,0  13 17 7 12 4 19 15 24 7 18 29 30 (bfd) 
32 ESP 1  Sanchez Francisco, Illan Ramon  205,0  12 9 6 19 11 11 6 19 32 (dnf )  24 32 14
33 RUS 7  Chaus Vladimir, Gribanov Denis  102,0  6 14 22 7 7 20 5 1 1 4 13 2 (dns) 
34 JPN 4271  Ishikawa Yuya, Yanagawa Shouichi  119,0  14 10 15 6 13 -26 1 14 7 19 12 6 2
35 GRE 7  Vasilas Georgios, Papadopoulos Andreas  130,0  4 18 14 17 12 18 7 (ocs )  10 14 5 3 8
36 ITA 11  Zeni Fabio, Nicola Pitanti  139,0  20 13 21 -23 10 7 9 17 3 7 21 8 3
37 BLR 11  Adzintsou Daniil, Meyer Kiryl  145,0  25 16 10 16 5 8 11 7 17 11 14 (dnf )  5
38 GER 74  Zepuntke Daniel, Baldewein Dustin  151,0  15 6 29 21 20 17 17 (ocs )  4 3 1 5 13
39 FIN 7  Lindgren Joonas, Lindgren Niklas  152,0  13 20 17 15 14 5 (bfd )  6 13 16 9 17 7
40 ISR 22  Yosef Yogev, Sela Eran  156,0  13 16 12 9 19 12 13 3 -21 10 18 14 17
41 GER 55  Wagner Jan-Jasper, Scheufler Lennart  160,0  16 12 10 15 19 14 -24 18 6 21 11 4 14
42 GBR 814  Marsden Neil, Dobson Ian  166,0  21 22 5 4 21 -29 8 9 23 20 10 22 1
43 ISR 9  Eyal Levin, Yam Amir  166,0  24 12 16 5 16 18 (bfd )  16 2 2 16 dnf  6
44 SWE 333  Bergstr. Victor, Dackhammar Marcus  166,0  18 6 25 15 15 4 (bfd)  ocs  5 9 3 10 23
45 ITA 71  Airo Andrea, Masoli Nikolaos  170,0  23 20 12 7 24 9 (bfd )  20 12 6 8 18 11
46 POL 50  Piasecki Patryk, Mickiewicz Marcin  173,0  9 21 16 13 22 21 6 4 11 15 -28 19 16



2009 470 World Championship 
Rungsted 20-29 August 2009 
Results 470 WOMEN 
Scores take into account 1 discard 
No  Sailno  Name  Scores  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
1 NED 11  Westerhof Lisa, Berkhout Lobke  36,0  2 2 3 2 1 4 4 6 3 -8 6 1 1
2 ESP 696  Pacheco Tara, Betanzos Berta  62,0  4 -11 4 1 6 5 3 3 8 10 2 2 7
3 FRA 4  Petitjean Ingrid, Douroux Nadège  72,0  2 2 -19 9 4 2 1 18 4 2 4 6 9
4 ITA 23  Conti Giulia, Micol Giovanna  73,0  -17 5 1 7 3 1 2 2 7 13 15 5 6
5 AUS 357  Rechichi Elise, Parkinson Tessa  87,0  -19 6 1 5 2 3 10 16 12 6 9 11 3
6 NZL 75  Aleh Jo, Powrie Olivia  91,0  15 1 9 1 5 8 (bfd )  20 10 4 10 4 2
7 GBR 842  Wilson Pippa, Clark Saskia  91,0  8 4 3 2 6 2 11 -21 13 14 8 10 5
8 JPN 4151  Kondo Ai, Tabata Wakako  95,0  6 10 2 5 2 7 -17 17 11 11 13 3 4
9 GBR 822  Clark Penny, Hughes Katrina  106,0  14 1 5 7 1 15 8 9 -16 12 7 7 10
10 USA 1757  Maxwell Erin, Farrar Isabelle Kinsolving  112,0  5 5 15 6 12 11 18 -22 5 9 1 9 8
11 ARG 8  Sesto Maria Fernanda, Consuelo Monsegur  113 9 9 23 10 7 8 5 -25 6 1 11 8 6
12 ESP 133  Gallego Marina, Rita Roman Julia  124 1 3 20 13 3 20 19 1 1 3 19 -23 11
13 FRA 12  Rol Emmanuelle, Defrance Hélène  127 12 3 20 12 8 4 13 -24 17 5 3 19 1
14 JPN 4321  Yoshisako Yuka, Okuma Noriko  140 5 19 7 16 16 7 6 -26 14 7 16 12 5
15 GER 61  Lutz Tina, Beucke Susann  143 1 8 6 10 7 18 -22 13 18 16 12 17 7
16 ISR 311  Cohen Gil, Mamriev Dana  165 3 13 19 17 16 1 14 4 23 29*  -28 27 4
17 GER 4924  Wriggers Wibke, Genrich Geeske  165 27 7 12 4 27 6 15 5 2 19 25 16 (bfd) 
18 DEN 143  Koch Henriette, Sommer Lene  166 11 15 18 3 21 10 7 10 19 17 20 15 (bfd) 
19 CRO 111  Nincevic Enia, Zupan Romana  168 18 12 4 16 4 14 12 8 22 20 -23 13 15
20 NED 6  Fokkema Margriet, Jongens Marieke  173 16 11 13 3 8 11 24 7 -26 26 18 18 8
21 GBR 847  Mills Hannah, Chapman Rosie  176 13 18 8 14 13 3 16 29 9 25 14 14 (dnc) 
22 USA 1768  Carapiet Molly, Provancha Briana  194 15 9 10 14 18 13 20 12 -28 22 21 21 9
23 RUS 12  Ivanova Natalia, Krutskikh Diana  195 8 4 16 11 11 24 27 15 15 24 (raf )  28 2
24 GRE 21  Sampati Maria-Nefeli, Papadopoulou Sofia  196 10 16 14 4 23 6 9 -28 21 23 26 24 10
25 SWE 326  Ericson Lisa, Gabrielsson Astrid  198 3 7 16 25 18 16 (bfd )  19 dsq  15 5 20 14



At the conclusion of the regatta Morten Lorenzen, CEO of the Royal Danish Yacht Club commented: 'We are really happy – and tired. It has been a really big event for us, but with such a dedicated group of volunteers who have worked from early morning till late night, we have managed to achieve what we set out for: to hold a really great event for the sailors. And the order we send to the weather gods before the event, also came through!

'The Royal Danish Yacht Club’s ambition is to hold high class events, where the activities on the water combine with a great atmosphere ashore. We are all sailors ourselves, and just simply try to create an event we would like to participate in ourselves.'

The 2009 470 World Championship is one of a number of high profile sailing regattas taking place in Denmark this summer as part of wider festival of different sports, called Denmark’s Year of Sport.

To do their utmost to ensure that their events are held to the highest possible standards the Danish Sailing Association is working with the support of the insurance company CODAN (part of Sun Alliance Group), to provide TracTrac tracking during the Laser Radial Europeans, Finn Gold Cup, EUROSAF Match Racing Europeans and 470 World Championship.

The Danish Sailing Association has purchased 150 state-of-the-art GPS tracking devices, allowing races to be followed in real time over the internet.

Last year the TracTrac tracking of the ISAF Youth Sailing World Championship in Aarhus, Denmark was followed by nearly 30,000 viewers from 69 countries all over the world.

Up until Thursday, 79,000 track viewers had been opened by those following the 470 Worlds with total viewing amounting to 27 months.

Live tracking of the 470 World Championship can be viewed here: http://www.tractrac.com/?page=470worlds

Event website: http://worlds470.kdy.dk/

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