British Sport!!

Putting aside the issue of did the right boat get selected,  I have been working on a results database (SailRacer) to help answer these questions.

The SailRacer system was used to display the results at last week's Youth Nationals and I had also captured some of the previous results of the competitors,  this allows us to do comparisons between when they have competed against each other. 

Simon- that table may be misleading- as Peters is a younger helm than Weguelin, so the earlier events- even in other classes, will favour the elder helm. It now appears that Peters has caught up, and performed better on the (light wind) day than Weguelin.

I know nothing about the class or the girls involved, so just speculating.

Simon,

Your table is totally misleading, especially when you consider that there is a 2 year age gap between Peters and Weguelin,and most results listed are in the optimist class where age is highly significant. Others factors not reflected are

- the amount of coaching received by the 2 pairings - one is fully funded in the youth squad with ts support + loads of additional support , and the other is largely self coached and not in any squad and completely self-motivated

- the fact that Diamond only started crewing in January having previously been a successful helm - Ladies European 29er Champion after only 3 or 4 months in the class and 21st at the Worlds with a crew not ever sailed with before - not publicised anywhere.

Statistics may have their uses but definately not in this case.

 

The problem at the youths was due to the awful wind all week, some of the
races had to be run inside of chichester harbour, which some may say could
have created an unfair advantage for the girls from hayling island because
they would have better local knowledge of the tides etc, also the event was
purely a light wind event with some of the teams who race well in heavier
winds not having a chance to show what they can do.

dont think she was last year (feva national champ) i think it was some old dude, wasnt really paying attention. and anyway fevas are not exactly similar to 29ers. you can try and telll me that they are both small asymetrics but it is a mahoosive leap from feva to 29er. the 9er is so much less stable and more exciting and has a lot more bits of string than a feva.