Scorching heat in Pornichet for the Youth Match Racing World Championship!
by Lucile Troel 19 Jul 2022 07:01 AEST
17-23 July 2022
Youth Match Racing World Championship! © Bruno Bouvry / APCC
In a blazing heat, the twelve crews competing in the Youth Match Racing World Championship spent the whole of Monday training to really get a feel for the J80s supplied by the APCC and the race zone in the bay of Pornichet in Brittany.
The championship will kick off tomorrow at 08:00 UTC with the so-called 'round robin', where all the competitors will vie against their rivals in a series of duels until they secure a final ranking. The top 8 crews will qualify for the quarter finals. Conditions are set to be virtually perfect as we're expecting around 15 knots of W'ly wind with temperatures finally set to drop. The 3 French crews, skippered by Thimoté Polet, Ian Garetta and Timothée Rossi will naturally have a slight advantage as they've already competed on the race zone in Pornichet.
Of particular note today is the fact that the skippers' parade, which was initially scheduled for this evening at 16:30 UTC, has been postponed until the same time tomorrow evening. Indeed, a Prefectural Order banning any public gatherings in the form of festive and sporting events or protests was filed at 10:00 UTC today due to the intense heat.
Impressions
Thimoté Polet
"With this championship, we're clearly in it to win it, not just participate. The crew has been training for this for several months, so we'll be giving our all for the next 5 days to ensure we get to sing the national anthem on Saturday evening. We're fortunate in that our selection rounds and a short training session were based here, so we are more familiar with this race zone than the teams from overseas. Added to that, we're sailing with Eliott Le Dem, who's the local of the leg, so that's bound to help, but it remains to be seen whether all that will be enough to carry us through!"
Timothée Rossi
"The APCC organises a lot of match racing competitions. As a result, we're starting to get used to training here and it's fair to say that it may give us a bit of an advantage, so we're happy to have a world championship here in France. For the coming week we haven't put too much pressure on ourselves. We've left the position of race favourite to the favourites and are maintaining more of an outsider role, just taking each match as it comes. The main aim though is to make it into the quarter finals and hence the knockout phase."
Ian Garetta
"We're very pleased to be here. It was somewhat unexpected for us as we didn't qualify. We're here after another team withdrew (crew from Bahrain, editor's note), so we're raring to go now! We haven't really set ourselves a particular goal. Above all, we want to make it through to the quarter finals and then take it one match at a time!"