Lilley adds bronze at Kiel Week
by Australian Sailing Team 1 Jul 2019 09:28 BST
Jake Lilley at Kiel Week © Sascha Klahn
The shutters came down on Kiel Week in Germany on Sunday June 30 and Queenslander Jake Lilley moves to the next event on the Olympic qualification path with another Finn medal in his collection - this time bronze.
Conditions across the week were ideal; more like California than Europe with breeze blowing in the teens and air temperatures in the high 20s off the port city on Germany's Baltic Sea coast.
Finn
Lilley shared his thoughts on the Medal race: "We had a great medal race on Sunday morning. It was really good practice with an interesting points scenario, having to race two guys really close but also go for it. Coach Rafa [Trujillo] and I came up with a good plan and executed the race well.
"It's always nice to take a medal; we are close to taking a better colour medal but at this stage we are just putting block after block in place and trying to narrow in on the Olympic test event in August. Good to check our speed and time around the track - to check in on the Japanese summer."
49er
After starting their series strongly, the 49er pair of Sam and Will Phillips finished outside the top five but take away important lessons. Victoria's talented sibling combination qualified for Sunday's Olympic competition Medal race and went to the start line with a bold plan, only to find the host country had other ideas.
"Our prestart plan was to execute a start on port tack, the lifted tack," Sam described. "GER3 very effectively blocked us from tacking onto port late in the start sequence, which put us on the back foot. We had our moments in the race but never fully recovered. On a positive note there are a lot of lessons for us to take away from this week."
Kieler Woche, best known as Kiel Week, takes place from 22 to 30 June divided into two halves. The first half focuses on the international classes while the second half shifts its gaze to the Olympic events. Across the whole nine days Kieler Woche hosts more than 4,000 sailors from 60 nations, competing in more than 1,900 boats.
Australian Sailing Team Results:
Finn (25 boats)
3rd: Jake Lilley 3, 4, 1, 1, 6, 4, (26 RET), 8, 4 (M) = 31 points
6th: Jock Calvert 8, 1, 4, (11), 7, 11, 5, 9, 14 (M) = 59 points
49er (82 boats)
7th: Will & Sam Phillips 1, 1, 5, 1, 8, 4, 13, 4, (20), 13, 18 (M) = 68 points
For more information visit event website: www.kieler-woche.de/en