Youth Match Racing World Championship - Day 1
by Lucile Troel 19 Jul 2022 13:52 PDT
17-23 July 2022
The Youth Match Racing World Championship finally kicked into life today in the bay of Pornichet on France's Atlantic coast, enabling the 12 crews battling it out on the water and the Race Committee to get down to business in the 'round robin'.
Following yesterday's Prefectural Order banning any public gatherings through until 12:00 UTC today, this Tuesday morning was reserved for some crew training, which came as a welcome bonus after yesterday's lack of breeze. Then at 12:00 UTC on the dot, the president of the Race Committee was able to get the first matches under way in perfect conditions: 15/20 knots of W'ly wind and glorious sunshine.
20 matches were able to be raced, split into 5 flights (each flight comprising 4 duels). Riccardo Sepe had a very solid first day, winning all his 3 matches. Another triple champion today was Frenchman Ian Garreta, who won 3 of the 5 matches his crew competed in. For their part, the crews from New Zealand, Sweden, Australia and France (Thimoté Polet and Timothée Rossi) respectively won 2 matches. Emil Kjaer's Danish crew won one match, whilst the British and Irish teams came back empty-handed from their first day.
Impressions
Riccardo Sepe (ITA)
"3 matches, 3 victories; it really has been a great day! Conditions are perfect and we managed to bring our A game despite the wind being a bit shifty. The team cohesion was spot on. We're going to try to sail as well again tomorrow! It's a solid start for the championship. We managed to post our best possible performance and we're really happy!"
Ian Garetta (FRA)
"It's a great day which could have been really great. It's a shame as we started off with 3 victories from the get-go and then we struggled a bit against the Americans. Against Thimoté Polet it was a bit more hotly contested. We made a mistake at the windward mark, which cost us dearly, but it was a wonderful match! We're really happy to have kicked off the championship. Conditions were really fantastic, just perfect for match racing, and 5 matches makes for a very busy day!"
Nicolas Bernal (BRA)
"Early in the day we had a lot of difficulty sailing the boat, added to which it's the first time we've sailed together with this crew set-up during this championship. At the end of the day, the wind dropped off, so conditions got easier for us. We decided to go back to basics and that was an effective game plan!"
Full results here.