Youth Match Racing World Championship - Day 2
by Lucile Troel 20 Jul 2022 22:35 PDT
17-23 July 2022
After a morning briefing at 07:00 UTC, the sailors got back into action on the race zone of Pornichet at around 08:30 UTC in a W'ly wind of around 9/10 knots, gusting up to 12/13 knots.
No fewer than 7 flights were contested today, amounting to 26 matches in all, so there are 5 flights (20 matches) left to race tomorrow, before the competition reaches the quarter final stage. It proved to be a fantastic day for Ian Garetta, who scored 5 bullets in the 5 matches he participated in!
It was also a great day for the Danish sailor Emil Kjaer, Frenchmen Thimoté Polet and Timothé Rossi, Swede Marius Westerlind and American Jeffrey Petersen, who each bagged a hat-trick. Australian Finn Tapper won 2 matches, whilst New Zealander Robbie McCutcheon, Italian Riccardo Sepe and Briton Alexander Colquitt secured one match apiece. Unfortunately, it was a tough day for Brazilian Nicolas Bernal, who failed to win any matches, and for Irish sailor Maeve White, who is yet to make her mark on the scoreboard.
This evening, it's Ian Garretta who is leading the round robin, but there's still everything to play for as a number of sailors are still to complete all their matches.
Impressions
Robbie McCutcheon (NZL)
"We made a few small mistakes, which resulted in 4 defeats, but we're feeling good! The J80 is a new craft for us, but we like it! The crew's doing a great job, we just need to correct the odd error. Up next, the plan is the same as it has been since the start: to take each match as it comes and try to rack up as many victories as possible. Once we reach the quarter final stage, the whole points tally is reset for everyone, so we'll try to qualify and get back off to a good start!"
Maeve White (IRL)
"To be honest, it was a bit of a tough day for us. We hadn't done a lot of sailing together as a crew prior to this championship, which is causing us to make some small errors. We're making bad decisions with the manoeuvring and on the upwind and reaching tacks. We're really happy to be here though. There's been breeze every day, which doesn't often happen in competitions. It's really cool to be here in France!"
Emil Kjaer (DEN)
"It's been an intense day! I'm pretty excited right now, as our last match was very hotly contested. We ended up tailing the French (Ian Garetta, editor's note). We had to really give our all to play catch up, but we still lost the duel, which was incredible! We're having a good championship. We lost two races rather stupidly, but we're quick, which augurs well going forward! We really love the boats, which I believe are perfectly geared up for match racing!"
Full results here.