Mat Belcher & Will Ryan blog: Bronze medal at European Championships
by Mat Belcher & Will Ryan 9 Jul 2015 22:26 BST
9 July 2015
Mat Belcher & Will Ryan at the 470 Mens Open European Championships © Nikos Alevromytis / International 470 Class
A final 3rd place in the penultimate Medal Race secured 3rd place overall in the 2015 470 Open European Championships which concluded Saturday July 4th after six days of racing. This extends the teams podium record for each major event competed in since the team formed in October 2012!
Arriving to Aarhus before the event, the team welcomed the newest team member in the form of a new Ziegelmayer 470 Hull which was christened 'Bewitched' by Ruslana Taran. Keeping with traditions, the name continues the Nicole Kidman movie theme which the team has adopted with great success in previous years. The traditional female touch provided by Ruslana also has special significance with Ruslana not only a World Champion, but as well a 3-time Olympic Medallist, voted as World-Sailor-of-the-Year, and also a former athlete of coach Victor Kovalenko.
Despite the new boat and entering as defending Champions from the 2013 and 2014 Events, the team struggled to find consistency in the opening qualification series of the event with unstable winds providing many challenges for top teams within the 70-boat strong fleet.
However as the finals-series racing evolved within the now condensed 'Gold-Fleet'; the team demonstrated their ability to fight back and show why they still hold the World Ranked No.1 spot posting two bullets (1,1) to jump back up the leaderboard and into overall contention with two days of competition remaining.
Mat summarised: "For the top guys, the expectation and pressure coming into this event means we all have to pull out some pretty good results. The results this week show the company we are in and the conditions we had here in Aarhus. It's part of racing and it's the same for everyone, but you could see some big names in the back of the fleet. We put ourselves in a difficult position this week, but we have come back from some pretty difficult circumstances over the years. After we did our discard pretty much on day one, we had to keep getting the best scores we can and try to close the gap as much as possible."
Unfortunately, despite the heat of the local Danish summer weather intensifying as the regatta came to its climax, the wind again decided it had other ideas with no-wind meaning no-racing was held on the penultimate day, effectively ending any opportunity to further condense the points at the top of the table. With the team still sitting in 4th place overall, after a lengthy delay again waiting for wind, the arrival of a very light sea-breeze provided a welcome opportunity to race again.
As the teams started and the wind again slowly dropped down tantalisingly close to the limit of race-able conditions, it seemed a possible repeat of the recent Weymouth World Cup regatta race abandonment was on the cards; but as the boats moved on to the second lap, AUS 11 was able to move into position to secure another podium finish leapfrogging the World Ranked no 2 Greek team.
"The wind was extremely light today, so it really was a race in which anything can happen. We started well and raced well and we can't ask for too much more than that," Will Ryan said at the conclusion of the regatta. "We were happy to make improvements throughout the week, and with a slow start to the regatta, despite tough conditions and shortened format, we did well to get back on the podium. It's been a week for improvements for us as a team and that was the ultimate goal for the event. This puts us in a good spot preparing for Rio, which is what we are focused on."
The team will now take a short break before continuing preparations towards the Rio Olympic Test Event which will be held August 16th to 22nd. This event will see entries limited to only one boat per nation in each event and signals the one year point before the 2016 Rio Olympics!
This is not our favourite colour of medal, but we are proud of our achievements and happy we are on a good path towards our key events. It is a journey towards the Olympic Games and we are happy we can share it with you all.
Thank you as always to all of our partners and supporters and especially our coach Victor.