Laser Radial Worlds’ Day 1
Olympic gold medallist Anna Tunnicliffe (USA) proved she has lost nothing from her speed and guile for her break this season from the Laser Radial class as she returned to a first and second place from the first two races of the Laser Radial World Championships which opened today on the Clyde estuary off Largs in Scotland.
Across a testing pair of races that were split by the passage of a weather front which swung the breeze from south to west to produce a fitting introduction to the Clyde’s testing winds and waters, Tunnicliffe shared best points from the day in the Blue fleet with Holland’s Marit Bouwmeester, world ranked two, who mirrored the American’s tally with a second and a first.
In the Yellow fleet it was Belarus’ 2007 world champion Tatiana Drosdovskaya who lead from the first windward mark to be followed across the finish line of the first race by China’s Olympic bronze winner Lijia (Lucy) Xu, with Paige Railey, the 2005 world champion taking third. Railey then went on to win the second race to lie third overall after the first day. The Chinese sailor Xu, the 2005 class world champion, is recovering from a health problem and did not sail the second race.
While the forecast was for winds to be slightly more moderate than recent days, with the breeze just east of south in the first race in fact it proved a blustery and damp curtain raiser to what many consider may prove to be a high scoring regatta. The committee boat on the women’s fleet recorded 26 knots of breeze during the first race which most women reported was a test of hiking strength and smart sailing.
The second contest was raced in a diminishing westerly breeze. The second downwind in particular just edged into really difficult territory with big swings in wind direction and considerable differences in wind pressure. The race committees on the water must have heaved a collective sigh of relief to get racing concluded before it became too fluky.
For the host nation’s Skandia Team GBR, Ali Young proved the most regular with a sixth and ninth to lie 11th overall, whilst Scot Charlotte Dobson, ranked third in the world, was less happy with her 21st in the first race but fought hard to score a seventh in the second heat to lie 23rd
As ever consistency across the two races was far from easy. The consoling factor for those who perhaps did not make the best possible start to the championship which most of the 119 women from 35 countries and 104 men from 30 nations was that proper sunshine welcomed the fleets back to shore at the Scottish Sailing Institute at Largs Sailing Club, a pleasing contrast to a bleak morning where Scotland’s soft but gentle rain was all too evident.
Laser Radial World Championships
Day 1 Women: Results after two races:
1 M Bouwmeester (NED) 3pts.
2 A Tunnicliffe (USA) 3pts,
3 P Railey (USA) 4pts
4 T Drozdovskaya (BLR) 6pts
5 S Multala (FIN) 7pts
6 S Lihan (USA) 11pts,
7 A Lindberg (DEN) 11pts,
8 J Olsson (SWE) 13pts,
9 C Blom (NED) 14pts
10 T Elias Calles Wolf (MEX) 14pts
