Australian Sailing Team at the 470 World Championship - Day 3
by Australian Sailing Team 7 Aug 2019 00:13 PDT
Day 3 of the Yamaha 470 World Championships, Enoshima, Japan © Junichi Hirai / Bulkhead Magazine Japan
470 crews put in an intensely physical day three at the 470 World Championship and Tokyo 2020 Olympic qualification on Tuesday August 6, completing three races in the steady 11 knot breeze, gusting slightly higher.
As the mercury nudged 30 degrees, the men's qualification series wrapped up which means the heavy-hitters advance to face-off in the 26-boat gold fleet, with the remaining 26 teams in silver.
Positioned just one point behind Spain's Xammar/Rodriguez is the Aussie duo of Mathew Belcher/Will Ryan who recorded scores of 2,1,2. Importantly, they also hold the lowest discard score of the fleet, a 4th place, which may just come in handy later on in the championship.
Lead coach Victor Kovalenko summarised Day 3 in saying "We had a bit more wind but conditions were much more difficult than yesterday with a lot of upstream current patterns at the course, and interesting pressure lines upwind and downwind. Mat and Will had two top starts and all three races they were top three at the first mark with positive improvements and position gains. It was a pleasure to watch their racing today, though a bit stressful sometimes. They made gold fleet with a good discard to take more risks later."
Post-racing Belcher said, "We are happy. We were just trying to get out of qualifying with some good results; I guess the real event starts tomorrow. We are looking forwards to racing the main guys."
Talking through the course conditions, Ryan commented, "Today was a pretty standard Japanese sea breeze style of day. A little bit of swell left over and three pretty long races - a long tough day."
Heading into his third Olympics and with a bag packed full of Olympic and world championship medals, Belcher is regarded as the class legend. But the young talent around him are pushing relentlessly.
"It's great to see the younger generation come through and really start to show a new level of sailing, and I guess a different style than what we have seen before," continued Belcher. "For me it has just been brilliant, because I have been in the class long enough to really enjoy the challenge of these young guys coming through. They are really talented, and I am trying to hang on as much as we can. It is pretty impressive to see how many young teams are in the top group."
Chris Charlwood and Josh Dawson from WA rallied to post a much-improved set of scores, 12,6,20, though not enough to make the gold fleet cut-off.
Women
In the 39-boat women's fleet racing a single series of 11 races ahead of Friday's medal race, Western Australia's Jerwood/de Vries weren't able to repeat their day two performance, dropping out of the top ten, to 15th.
Australia is one of the 14 countries vying for six women's Olympic qualification places on offer at the 2019 470 Worlds.
Five races have been completed for all fleets and racing continues on Wednesday 7 August 2019 at 1200 hours local time, with another three races scheduled.
Results after Day 3:
Men (52 boats)
5th Mat Belcher & Will Ryan (4), 4, 2, 1, 2 = 9 points
34th Chris Charlwood & Josh Dawson 20, (25), 12, 6, 20 = 58 points
Women (39 boats)
15th Nia Jerwood & Monique de Vries 7, 12, (27), 15, 19 = 19 points
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