Royal Southern Match Cup - Overall
by Phil Riley 15 Jun 2015 17:27 BST
10-14 June 2015
Ian Williams emerged as a worthy winner of the first ever World Match Racing Tour event to be held in the UK, the Royal Southern Match Cup 2015. But this ISAF Grade 2 event posed a real scare for Ian from the Club's own Academy member Mark Lees in the semi-finals.
Five-time World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) champion and the current world number one, Williams had kept a 100 per cent win record until he ran into Lees in the first of the knock-out series.
Lees took the first race and an early lead in the best-of-five, before Williams hit back taking the next two. In a declining and shifty Solent breeze, and despite a coming together at the top mark, Lees kept the tie alive with a win to level the scores.
However, Williams then showed why he is ISAF's top-ranked match racer by taking the decider by the scruff of the neck and dominating the race to reach the final. There, in the increasingly fickle wind, he beat Australian match racing champion Matt Jerwood 2-0 in a shortened series to take the title.
"You never expect it to be easy" said a victorious Williams. "It's a strong field and what you find with these regattas is people improve as it goes on. So you can feel that you are winning in the round robin quite comfortably, but once you get into the final stages it always ramps up and people hit their stride."
"And that's the way it was, with a very close semi-final, especially, against Mark Lees. The final was particularly tricky, and it was a case of keeping your head out of the boat and all the guys were looking around for where the best pressure was, and protecting the side we thought the best pressure was going to come from, while taking the small shifts when we could to keep our nose in front."
Racing at the Royal Southern Match Cup for the second successive year – this time as part of the first ever WMRT event in the UK – Williams said he was delighted to have taken part.
"It's great seeing some of the younger British crews coming through, like Mark Lees and Connor Miller, and Mark pushed us all the way in the semi and it could have gone either way."
"I've really enjoyed being here for the Royal Southern Match Cup, and I've got Ricky McGarvie here from my World Match Racing Tour crew, James French, a young British guy we've been training with, and my old friend Richard Sydenham, so that's been great as well."
His fellow finalist Jerwood, meanwhile, echoed the sentiment despite having to visit A&E after suffering a head injury on the first day.
"It was a really tricky regatta for us with a lot of things thrown at us that we don't get much practice at, a lot of current, asymmetric spinnakers, the little incident with my head, quite a lot of challenges, but I think we rose to the occasion when we had to,' said the Australian."
As for the boom-related injury he admitted: "I was feeling a little weird for a couple of days after that, but I tried not to let on to everyone. I was quite tired but it's not too bad."
He and his crew though, feel they made Williams work for the title, after beating Connor Miller 3-0 in their semi-final.
"We didn't quite pull it off in the final but we are happy with our efforts. Ian's so experienced so we needed some variation or something to give us a chance, so we felt the light winds and shifty conditions, the lighter boats, were more to our advantage. We had a really good semi-final so were feeling quite confident, but we didn't just quite put it together. We were leading the first race and missed a couple of shifts and just let him get away, but we're pretty happy. Ian sailed really well so all credit to him."
Jerwood went on to finish second overall, winning the Billy Foulkes Alladin Cave trophy for the best under 25 helm of the event and he added: "It's been awesome and I'm definitely coming back next year."
Miller and his new Rascal Racing team went on to win the shortened single-race petit final, beating fellow Brit Lees into third and earning a place at the Warren Jones Invitational in Perth as the best place British sailor under 25.
"The Rascal Racing team is really pleased as a group with what we've been able to do this weekend" said Miller. "We came with the goal of reaching the semi-finals and finished third overall. We were beaten three-nil in the semi but every race was a tight one."
"The racing here has been brilliant and I'd like to put a special mention in for Colin Hall who has been absolutely amazing in getting us here. It wouldn't have been possible to have been here without him."
"We've got a lot of training to do before Warren Jones and the biggest thing for us will be the funding, so we will be looking for a sponsor for that."
As event director Colin Hall said: "It's been great to see the talent rising to the top, and to have in the petit final two young British guys fighting it out for the chance to go to Australia for the Warren Jones Invitational – Connor Miller will have a fabulous time out there, Mark Lees knows that because he's already been.
There has been intense competition out on the water and great camaraderie among the teams once they are ashore."
At the well-attended clubhouse prize-giving special thanks was given to all the club volunteers who had helped and accommodated the visiting sailors, as well as the race committee headed by Simon Hand and the team of international and national umpires led by Neven Baran.
In organising the Match Cup 2015 The Royal Southern Yacht Club is grateful for the generous support and sponsorship of Raymarine, Village Pre-Schools, Ullman Sails, ICOM, the RYA, Allspars and Grapefruit Graphics.
For results and photo gallery head to:
www.royal-southern.co.uk/Afloat/Match-Cup-2015
SailRacer covered the 2015 Match Cup with live GPS tracking, analysis and updates - see the replays online: MatchCup.SailRacer.org
Final Results:
1st Ian Williams
2nd Mathew Jerwood
3rd Connor Miller
4th Mark Lees
5th Joachim Aschenbrenner
6th Christian Tang
7th Annabel Vose
8th Lukasz Wosinski
9th Philip Bendon
10th Mathew Reid