International Cadet Worlds - Ella Connor inherits father’s skills

by Peter Campbell on 28 Jul 2010 International Cadet World championship update: At the age of 15, Hobart lass Ella Connor has obviously inherited the sailing skills of her David Connor, a former world champion as crew in the Fireball class and Olympian in the Flying Dutchman class.

One difference is that Ella is quickly making her name as a helmsperson rather than crew, overnight steering her boat back into third place overall in the International Cadet World championship at Puck, Poland. Her father crewed with Gary Smith in the Fireballs and in the Flying Dutchman at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.

In a day of mixed fortunes for the Australian team, Ella and her 10-year-old crew, Hannah Chadwick, began with a 54th place in the 80-boat fleet, but followed this with a 13th and fourth to move up from fifth to third in standings.

After seven heats, with one discard race, the youngsters from Sandy Bay Sailing Club have a net 53 points, three points ahead of their more experienced club mates, Alec and Samantha Bailey, who started the day with a 41st and a 31st but bring came strongly with a third third place.

Australians are in four of the top six places overall with 12 heats scheduled to complete the championship, with Anton and Julian Sasson still second overall, on 31 points and Isabella Say and Ben Brill in sixth place on 74 points. Both crews are from Sandringham Yacht Club in Melbourne.

Of the other Australian crews, Ian Lee and Alex Brzoska are 11th overall on 90 points, today suffering a bfd (black flag) in the second race of the day, after finishing sixth in the earlier race. They finished the day with a 15th.

Katie Mullens and Jackie Stokes are 23rd overall while Ashleigh Dyer and Georgina Hughes are 35th in the 80 boat fleet.

Still heading the fleet are the Polish champions Malecki Krzysztof and Mickieeicz Mikolaj, despite having a dnf (did not finish) and bfd (black flag from premature starting) on their scorecard.

Their points total, after dropping the bfd disqualification, is still on 21.7 as their dnf points were changed from 81 to 14.7 points after being given redress by the international jury, presumedly because their dnf was caused by another competitor.

Other young Australian women are contesting the International 420 worlds at Haifa, Israel, with Sasha and Jaimie Ryan and Eloise Brake and Ashley Warlow qualifying for the gold fleet and Lucy Shephard and Georgie Toner qualifying for the silver fleet.

For more information, please go to: www.cadetclass.org