British Sailing Team at ISAF Sailing World Cup Miami - Overall
by Lindsey Bell, RYA 1 Feb 2015 06:05 GMT
26-31 January 2015
Patience and Willis round off a golden hat trick for Brits in Miami
Luke Patience and Elliot Willis ensured their first ISAF Sailing World Cup medal as a team was a golden one on Saturday (31 January), boosting the British Sailing Team's medal tally to three gold and five silver medals at the season-opening regatta in Miami.
The 470 European Champions, who teamed up 11 months ago, add their gold to those already won a day early by Giles Scott and Bryony Shaw, with Laser sailor Nick Thompson, Ben Saxton-Nicola Groves in the Nacra 17 and Hannah Mills-Saskia Clark in the 470 Women's event claiming final day silvers along with Megan Pascoe and Alexandra Rickham-Niki Birrell's silvers from the Paralympic classes on Friday.
After a light wind-marred day on Friday, Biscayne Bay served up the perfect mix of sunshine and 14-19 knot breeze for the final medal race showdowns.
Patience and Willis, sailing at their first Miami World Cup regatta together having teamed up last February, had sailed an impressive opening series to guarantee themselves a podium finish, and with a good chance of gold with a 15 point advantage over the Australian World Champions Belcher-Ryan heading into the double points medal race.
A seventh place finish in the race to the Australians' third was more than enough for the Brits to wrap up the victory, and Patience was a delighted man afterwards.
"It's a great place to be. Man, we're so happy," the 2012 Olympic silver medallist enthused.
"We've worked really hard for this regatta. We've been in the boat together for less than a year still and I think everything just felt like it came together nicely this week.
"We were really hungry for this – what can I say? It's pretty cool to be wearing the yellow jerseys for most of the week and finish the job off on the last day. We're really chuffed."
"It was a pretty random race course – quite a stressful place to be," said the double World Champion Willis of the medal race.
"As soon as you wanted to put any control on anyone it was not an easy thing to do. There was a bit of a shift halfway through the race on our part in terms of a really clear 'race your own race' and keep an idea of where the other two boats were behind us and from that point on we started to work our way forward and it was a bit more controlling."
"The Australians are undoubtedly the dominant force in the 470 fleet and have been for quite some time. It's great to go head to head with them in a regatta and come out on top," Willis continued.
"Not many people do that, and hopefully it will be a sign of things to come looking forward."
Nick Thompson went into the day with high hopes of a Laser gold medal. Assured of finishing no worse than silver, just one point separated him and Germany's Philipp Buhl so whichever sailor won on the water would take home the Miami World Cup title.
Thompson did a good job of staying in front and covering his German rival on the first lap, looking comfortable for gold. But a broken kicker block soon put paid to that.
"I went in with a loose tactic of a bit of a match race and I thought I did a pretty good job to be fair," Thompson explained of the race.
"I managed to control him on the start and then got the better of him most of the way around the track. Then unfortunately at the first leeward mark my kicker block broke and that was kind of the end of that race. I had no speed upwind and couldn't sail it downwind. So that was it."
The Santander Worlds bronze medallist was frustrated not to have been able to close off the victory, but nonetheless took positives from his strong performance in a hugely competitive fleet.
"I sailed a pretty solid week and to drop the 12th was pretty good sailing. So I am disappointed, but the flipside was that I did sail fantastically. I didn't really make too many mistakes this week and I feel like my sailing's coming together. It's mixed emotions if I'm honest.
"I really put a marker down for this event to try and win it. All things aside I got pretty close and should be pretty pleased with how I sailed I think."
Ben Saxton and Nicola Groves, competing in their second event since teaming up last October, consolidated their silver medal position in the Nacra 17 final race.
Gold had already been assured to the Italians Bissaro-Sicouri a day earlier, but Saxton and Groves protected their silver with a fifth in the medal race.
"We're taking this as our first proper event," Saxton explained. "Abu Dhabi was really a warm up for here, so this is the first event we wanted to identify and do well in and learn about our team. Not many people beat us so we're happy – we need to get the Italians next time!
"We were 17 points ahead going into the medal race so all we had to do was not come last. But we didn't think of it that way – we wanted to try and put a good result in, which is why we were happy with our second lap when we came back to fifth.
"You have to get practiced at doing well in medal races – there's no point just trying to come ninth!"
Groves was happy with how the new team is developing and her transition from the 49erFX to the mixed multihull class.
"I'm tired but I'm still feeling good. I'm looking forward to getting back to training and then into Palma and Hyeres. So a good future coming up!
"New challenges, new team, new year... it's going to be a really good year I think. I've got a good feeling!"
Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark also held on to their silver medal position in the 470 Women's race – the last of the day – amid a tight finish.
The Japanese team of Kondo Yoshido-Yoshioka was pushing for the medal spots and won the medal race by almost a minute. Mills and Clark had to finish the race better than eighth to keep hold of the silver, and pulled back to sixth in a bunch finish to ensure they finished the job.
"It was really, really difficult conditions – kind of how it has been all week with bands of pressure coming down each side," a relieved Mills explained.
"When you're trying to play it safe that makes for a particularly hard race. But we had a particularly exciting last run with pretty much the whole fleet on a big line and we just managed to get the boats we needed to stay second."
"Definitely we came here to get a medal in Miami. 2015 is a really important year for us," Clark added.
"It's a good building platform but something really important to remember is that me and Hannah weren't even a partnership at this point in time for the 2012 cycle.
"So there's lots of training still to be done, lots of sailing still to be done. We're looking forward to it."
Sophie Weguelin and Eilidh McIntyre were also in 470 medal race action, finishing eighth in the race and seventh overall.
Elsewhere across the bay, event winner Giles Scott rounded off his regatta in style with a second place in the Finn medal race, extending his overall winning margin to 25 points. Ed Wright finished seventh overall, while in the RS:X Women's windsurfing race Bryony Shaw capped off her regatta win with a fifth, with Izzy Hamilton winning the medal race to end her event in ninth.
Nick Dempsey sailed a solid medal race to finish third and improve his overall standing in the RS:X Men's event to fourth, while Dylan Fletcher-Alain Sign and John Pink-Stuart Bithell ended their 49er regatta in fourth and fifth places respectively.
Alison Young was sixth in the Laser Radial medal race to conclude her regatta in fifth place, with Charlotte Dobson-Sophie Ainsworth tenth in the 49erFX event.
"It's been a tricky week with a full range of conditions for the sailors to contend with," surmised RYA Olympic Manager Stephen Park. "There have been some unusual offshore winds, and very shifty too resulting in some significant place changes throughout all the fleets all week.
"The good news from a British team perspective is that we had people fighting it out not just for medals, but for golds in the majority of classes during the course of the week, and to come away with eight medals at this stage is a good place to be.
Park continued: "It was disappointing to have no racing for the Paralympic classes on their final day yesterday, as OCS penalties in both the Sonar and for Megan Pascoe in the 2.4mR on the penultimate day cost them both dearly.
"But overall the team should be pleased, our progress has been good but it doesn't stop here. We're looking forward to getting some more training hours in and to the start of the European regatta season in the spring."
Full results from the 2015 ISAF Sailing World Cup Miami can be found here.
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