Extreme Sailing Series™ 2014 Act 2, Muscat, Oman - Day 2
by Extreme Sailing Series 20 Mar 2014 17:13 GMT
19-22 March 2014
Alinghi rise through the ranks on the Muscat stadium racecourse
It may not have been high-speed racing on the second day of the Extreme Sailing Series™ in Muscat, Oman, but it was as close as it gets, with the leaderboard reshuffling after every race. The fleet of 11 elite level teams used all of their tactical prowess to manoeuvre their Extreme 40s around the course, and after a short one lap shoot-out for the final race, the Swiss Alinghi took the lead, setting the scene for the business end of the event and the penultimate days racing tomorrow. The Swiss team's tactician and Olympic champion Anna Tunnicliffe summed up the day. "Today the starts were quite important, occasionally you could come back from a bad start, but coming off the start line in the top three was huge. Our game plan is to keep it simple and not get involved in any awkward situations. The conditions are so tricky out there, you just have to take each race as it comes, analysing it and generally just stick to our plan."
Alinghi handled the light wind stadium with equal skill as yesterday's open water racing, where the reaching starts determined the finishes, and mistakes were punished hard. 9 of the 11-boat fleet were given an OCS throughout the day pushing their Extreme 40s hard to the start line, resulting in a restart, with only Alinghi and Emirates Team New Zealand keeping their noses clean. The Kiwi team's skipper Dean Barker analysed their performance back on dock. "I think you always come off the water knowing a lot of the areas you can improve, but I generally think it's working out how you can improve your averages across the day. You come off the water feeling pretty battered and bruised to be honest. It's brutal sailing here – you try your best to be consistent but all you need is to have a tough race, or a tough break somewhere and it catches up. Overall we're pretty pleased with how we've been doing 90% of the time, it's just getting a little bit more consistent." After two race wins today, the Kiwi team finish the day in third place.
The defending champions – of both the overall Series and of the Muscat Act – on The Wave, Muscat had their pre-start routine near-perfected from the first of today's six races, starting the day with a win and rarely finishing out of the top three. The team, who started the day in fifth, sailed a smarter course and less distance than the rest of the fleet according to the SAP analytics, and have rolled up the leaderboard to second place, three points behind their 2013 rivals Alinghi.
The Danish SAP Extreme Sailing Team led the fleet overnight, but unfortunately where some teams rise others will inevitably fall, and the Danish finished the day in fourth place – but well within touching distance of the top three, just five points behind Emirates Team New Zealand. Franck Cammas' Groupama sailing team are a further 11 points behind the Danish, with everything to play for over the coming days.
J.P. Morgan BAR, a team that includes three Olympic champions, claimed three-second place finishes today, upgrading themselves from eighth to sixth place, as the British squad started to really get to grips with the stadium racecourse. The team's headsail trimmer Pippa Wilson, a gold medallist from Beijing, was positive after racing. "It was a good day for us today. We had some really good starts, and then some really bad ones, but overall a really good and positive day for us. We worked well together as a team and it was really nice for us to be at the front of the fleet."
Before racing, Red Bull Sailing Team's double Olympic champion skipper Roman Hagara, spoke about the level of competition on the water, which he described as the "toughest racing you can do". Watch the video here. The leaderboard is incredibly close with Hagara's team on 60 points in seventh place, just one point ahead of Oman Air – who are one point ahead of Realteam. The Swiss light wind specialists upped their game today, taking a win in the fifth race of the day, elevating them from 10th to ninth place. "It was great today, we sailed well. I think we like this style of racing in the stadium with lighter winds. We had some good starts and good pace at times. We tried to sail a simple game, finding wind on the right hand side of the course. Overall I'm really happy with today", commented skipper Jérôme Clerc.
Gazprom Team Russia also took their best result of the event with a second place, as did the Aussie team on GAC Pindar, who were continually improving throughout the day. "It's a really big learning curve for us at the moment, we're enjoying it. It's like we're on this vertical learning spike, which is great," commented the Aussie skipper Seve Jarvin. "We just want to keep improving, and today we just seemed to get better and better. We learnt a lot and there's a lot of stuff we found out about these boats just from today's racing which helped us a lot. So hopefully tomorrow we can just keep getting better!"
Before today's racing, quadriplegic sailor Hilary Lister and Oman's Nashwa Al Kindi, arrived in Muscat, following an extraordinary journey from Mumbai, India, historically marking the first time the passage has been sailed by a severely paralysed woman and the first to be recorded by an Arab female sailor. The inspirational women spoke of their remarkable adventure, a story of incredible determination and passion. Read more here.
The penultimate day's racing in Muscat begins at 1400 local time, and the racing will be broadcast to sports fans around the world live from 1530 local time/1230CET, and to fans in Oman live on national broadcaster, Oman TV.
Standings after Day 2: (thirteen races)
1st Alinghi (SUI) Morgan Larson, Anna Tunnicliffe, Pierre-Yves Jorand, Nils Frei, Yves Detrey 88pts
2nd The Wave, Muscat (OMA) Leigh McMillan, Sarah Ayton, Pete Greenhalgh, Kinley Fowler, Nasser Al Mashari 85pts
3rd Emirates Team New Zealand (NZL) Dean Barker, Glenn Ashby, James Dagg, Jeremy Lomas, Edwin Delaat 82pts
4th SAP Extreme Sailing Team (DEN) Jes Gram-Hansen, Rasmus Køstner, Thierry Douillard, Peter Wibroe, Nicolai Sehested 77pts
5th Groupama sailing team (FRA) Franck Cammas, Sophie de Turckheim, Tanguy Cariou, Thierry Fouchier, Devan Le Bihan 66pts
6th J.P. Morgan BAR (GBR) Ben Ainslie, Nick Hutton, Paul Goodison, Pippa Wilson, Matt Cornwell 63pts
7th Red Bull Sailing Team (AUT) Roman Hagara, Hans-Peter Steinacher, Mark Bulkeley, Nick Blackman, Stewart Dodson 60pts
8th Oman Air (OMA) Rob Greenhalgh, Tom Johnson, Will Howden, Hashim Al Rashdi, Musab Al Hadi 59pts
9th Realteam (SUI) Jérôme Clerc, Arnaud Psarofaghis, Bryan Mettraux, Thierry Wassem, Nils Palmieri 58pts
10th Gazprom Team Russia (RUS) Igor Lisovenko, Paul Campbell-James, Alister Richardson, Pete Cumming, Aleksey Kulakov 57pts
11th GAC Pindar (AUS) Seve Jarvin, Troy Tindill, Ed Smyth, Sam Newton, David Gilmour 33pts
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Omani crews on The Wave, Muscat and Oman Air show cool heads in sweltering heat on second day of Extreme Sailing Series in Muscat (from Oman Sail)
The Wave, Muscat continued to make ground on the rest of the Extreme Sailing Series fleet in Muscat with another strong performance on the second day of racing while Oman Air's young crew added 'light air racing' to their growing Extreme 40 knowledge base.
Six races were held in the waters off the Almouj Golf Club and despite a breeze that dipped and built then dipped again, the racing community was kept entertained by some enthusiastic cheek by jowl competition which once again proved challenging for all 11 crews.
The crew on The Wave, Muscat skippered by Leigh McMillan once again showed cool heads in the sweltering heat, recording three podium places from six races including a win in the first race of the day.
Their points haul could have been greater had they not dropped from second to last place in the penultimate race of the day. According to McMillan, a wind shift left them 'in a tangle' stuck in the middle of the fleet with no wind and nowhere to go.
"It was a really good performance by the team apart from one major setback in Race 12 which cost us six or seven points and the top spot on the leaderboard," he explained.
"We were in second place and the wind shifted which left us in a bit of tangle. We got stuck with no wind. Everyone sailed around us and we ended up hitting the mark too so we did our penalty and sailed on in last place. It was a silly mistake but we shall be back to normal tomorrow."
As two time Extreme Sailing Series champion, McMillan is regarded as a formidable opponent in the Extreme 40 fleet with an almost matchless knowledge of what it takes to win, whatever the conditions.
To win in Muscat, he said simply, you need to stay 'cool'.
"You have to stay as cool as you can in these conditions and look for opportunities without getting too caught up with the other boats. Sail in clean air and get the boat rolling. Quite often we are successful at that but not always."
This steady consistency hoisted McMillan and his crew of Sarah Ayton, Kinley Fowler, Pete Greenhalgh and Nasser Al Mashari, from fourth place to second – just three points behind leaders Alinghi with two days, and around 15 races, remaining.
Putting in such a strong performance in front of family and friends left Al Mashari, who has become one of Oman's best-known sportsmen, eager for more success.
"We've had a very good day," he said. "My family has been watching from the beach – my brother has called me three times while I've been racing and he is really enjoying it. Oman means everything to me and racing on The Wave, Muscat is a real challenge but it means we get to raise the Omani flag all over the world which makes me very proud."
The light and patchy wind meant mistakes on the start line were rife across the fleet with 12 teams penalized for being over the line when the flag went up. These included Rob Greenhalgh's Oman Air, whose two errors cost them dear, dropping them one place in the ranking.
Learning from these errors placed them in a stronger position for the future, said crewman Will Howden.
"It was a tough day for us. We set out with high expectations but we made two errors at the start that hampered our progress but we had some good races too.
"We are a young team and going forward things are looking good but we need to be more consistent. We feel we are improving more than the other teams because our learning curve is so steep that any improvement makes a difference."
Both teams drew extra inspiration from the amazing new trans-ocean records set by Britain's quadriplegic sailor Hilary Lister and Oman Sail's Nashwa Al Kindi who sailed into Muscat on Wednesday night having completed the 850nm passage across the Indian Ocean from Mumbai in just nine days.
J.P. Morgan BAR in control and stronger on day 2 in Muscat (from J.P. Morgan BAR)
J.P. Morgan BAR showed their potential today, delivering good starts in three races out of the six to post a hatch-trick of second place finishes. A positive day on the water allows the team to chip two places off the overall leaderboard, leaving them in sixth after two days of racing and 13 races.
Skipper Ben Ainslie was happier with the team's performance today: "It was a better day, we made some improvements on our boat handling from yesterday. To be able to flag an issue and sort it out is really satisfying. We had some really good races and again we had some races that we struggled through - making a few mistakes but we were mixing it up. We are certainly improving, which was always the plan and in a way I'm much happier today than I was yesterday."
Another light day with 5 – 7 knots that led to slow and at times punishing racing, Trimmer, Nick Hutton commented, "We had a really good start to the day, we spent a lot of time last night debriefing and looking at our gybes so we were 100% happier with how that was going today. Which, ultimately made things a lot easier.
The starts were really good, a few of us have done some reaching starts in the AC45 so that experience helps a lot and we are moving forward through the fleet, rather than to the back so we are getting stronger. It's a great venue, I've raced on the ESS circuit in Oman before and it's great to be back here competing with J.P. Morgan BAR."
After some shuffling at the top throughout the day, Alinghi still dominate the overall leaderboard with home team the Wave, Muscat close behind in second.