470 World Championship at San Isidro, Argentina - Overall
by International 470 Class Association 28 Feb 2016 19:36 NZDT
20-27 February 2016
Gold medals to France & Croatia
In a medal race battle to the end, stepping away victorious with Gold medals are Camille Lecointre/Helene Defrance (FRA) and Sime Fantela/Igor Marenic (CRO).
A nail biting conclusion to the preceding five day of racing all came down to the medal races at the 2016 470 World Championship in Argentina.
In the 470 Women, any one of the top eight going into the medal race had a punt at a medal, whilst in the 470 Men the podium chancers were a bit more clear cut. Series leaders, Sime Fantela/Igor Marenic (CRO) were guaranteed a medal and fighting for gold with the Kiwis and Aussies. Whilst the French were in the hunt for silver or bronze.
After yesterday's storms, calms and in-betweens, medal race day was a much more sanguine schedule. The 470 Women got off first at 1100 hours for their short, sharp twenty-five minute windward/leeward race, followed by the 470 Men.
470 Women
Series leaders going into the double points medal race, France's Camille Lecointre/Helene Defrance had a 6 point advantage, giving them very little margin for error. A fifth place finish was more than good enough to secure their first ever Worlds title.
"I have never had this feeling before," grinned the new 470 World Champion helm, Camille Lecointre, "so I don't know how to describe it. It is so good to win with Helene today and I am so proud how we sailed well this week. Nothing was done before the medal race and it was very tricky with very shifty wind. We kept following the wind, even if we were not in the best position all the time, and in the end it worked."
"This morning we thought if we want to avoid all the problems, all the points calculations, we just have to go out to win the medal race," she explained Lecointre. They didn't quite do that, but as good as, by winning gold at the end of it.
"This is something we have never experienced and now I know what the feeling is when you win a World Championship. It is crazy," said a delighted Defrance said, "I am so happy to achieve something you know big, something solid and we are just proud. A lot of emotion. A new feeling I would say."
This surely will seal the French pair's date in Rio come August 2016, although they still await formal confirmation.
"I hope this will be enough," added Lecointre. "I think this is good for our confidence, but nothing is done, as the level in the girls is really tight. This doesn't mean we will be Olympic Champions, we will continue working, but it is a big boost. To know we can win a big event is important."
Despite their slow opener to the Championship, which even pushed them out of the leaderboard top ten, 2012 Olympic Gold Medallists Jo Aleh/Polly Powrie (NZL) dug deep when it mattered and converted their third overall going into the medal race to a silver medal. They needed to finish the high pressure medal race ahead of Austria's Lara Vadlau/Jola Ogar, the defending 470 World Champions, and did just that. An impressive performance in any medal race, but this was a cut above, as crew Powrie has battled illness for several days. To work their way through the fleet from 5th at the first mark to 3rd by the end was some undertaking.
"Polly was incredible; I was so proud today. She was worried about letting us down, she was amazing. She called a few of the bits in the race that actually made the difference," said Aleh after coming ashore. "She could croak things out. She used up the last of her voice in the race. I'm really amazed with Polly's performance."
On their performance at a World Championship in an Olympic year Aleh added, "Yeah, I think it is good. The good thing for us is that there are so many things that we didn't get quite right this week. To still be able to pull off a silver medal feels good. We've got a lot of things to go and work on, so we'll do that and we'll be back fighting fit."
Rounding out the podium are Lara Vadlau/Jola Ogar, who already count gold in 2015 and 2014 and silver in 2013, and now add the missing bronze medal to their collection.
"Here the competition was not easy, so we are happy we have the medal," commented Ogar. "I must say Camille deserved to be first, because she was brilliant tactically and figured out how to avoid the weed. Our finish is OK, but we are looking forward to Rio and this is one of the steps we have to do. We are super happy, because in these conditions to have a medal is quite something."
"We wanted to win gold, but we took what we could take. We did our job and we are ready to work even more," said Vadlau.
Describing the team's race plan, she said "We knew the left side would pay off, and the Kiwis tacked three times on us, which stopped us from going left and I didn't expect this. From this moment on, we were already too far behind to be better than 6th position. Really we killed ourselves from the start, which is a pity but still I am happy."
Glory in the medal race went to Poland's Agnieszka Skrzypulec/Irmina Mrozek, who overhauled early leaders Fernanda Oliveira/Ana Barbachan (BRA) by the second rounding of the upwind mark.
"We were waiting for our moment to push the button," said a thrilled Skrzypulec. "We are very happy that we did it today and this is our first victory in a Championship medal race. This will give us a lot of self-confidence. I don't know if it is a good expression in English, but this gives us a 'licence to kill'," she laughed in reference to the James Bond character.
"Our result is doubly special, as today our team mates won gold in the RSX Men and Women Worlds, so this is a golden day for Polish Olympic sailing," she concluded.
470 Women Results: (top ten, full results here)
1. Camille Lecointre/Helene Defrance (FRA 9)
2. Jo Aleh/Polly Powrie (NZL 75)
3. Lara Vadlau/Jolanta Ogar (AUT 431)
4. Fernanda Oliveira/Ana Luiza Barbachan (BRA 177)
5. Agnieszka/Irmina Orozek (POL11)
6. Anne Haeger/Briana Provancha (USA 1712)
7. Xiaoli Wang/Lizhu Huang (CHN 1221)
8. Sydney Bolger/Carly Shevitz (USA 88)
9. Afrodite Zegers-Kyranakou/Anneloes Van Veen (NED 216)
10. Bàrbara Cornudella Ravetllat/Sara López Ravetllat (ESP 14)
470 Men
"It feels amazing," said a delighted Fantela. "It has been a tough week and we are really happy. After seven years, we got gold back. Mostly every day of this week I was refreshing memories from our gold at the 2009 Worlds in Denmark and I am very happy.
"We had 13 points in hand, which seemed quite easy for us," explained Fantela in reference to their points advantage going into the medal race. "We rounded first at the gate, then suddenly we hit weed, five boats passed us and we rounded 8th at the upwind mark, with the New Zealand guys winning the race and just in a brief moment we were losing it. Fortunately we had a good downwind, stayed calm and we managed to regain some places and secure gold. It looked easy, but this was tough. I am proud of Igor and proud of myself and proud to have the gold medal in our pockets."
Overcoming adversity as faced by the Croatians in the medal race demands special skill sets.
"It helps that we have been in many medal races and we know we have to stay calm whatever," continued Fantela. "Definitely there are moments when we are losing it, but a few deep breaths, some discussion between us, and we are back calm and positive. Plus, there is an automatic instinct which kicks in through all our training."
"We have been so close the last two years especially," said Marenic. "This is a team effort and we did so well this week both of us. At some points this experience we have, our 15 years together, comes to the surface. And in these really, really tough conditions, I think it was harder for the younger and less experienced teams to deal with."
Their fifteen years of experience, so far includes two Olympic appearances, with Rio making it three, two 470 World Championship gold medals, two silver and three bronze, three 470 European Championship medals, and a stack of other top results.
Add to that an Optimist World Championship gold medal sixteen years ago for Fantela and you start to get the picture of the massive depth of knowledge these two have built up.
The speed machines this week, with 5 race wins to their credit including the medal race, were silver medallists Paul Snow-Hansen/Dan Wilcox. They opened their ticket with two wins, and simply were on a mission.
"Our medal race was really good to out on a win, and we are really stoked to have the silver medal," said Snow-Hansen. "It's been a hugely complicated week and everyone has had a story to tell here. You just had to keep concentrating on what you were doing."
The Olympics is in the DNA of the Willcox family. Dan's sister Anna competed in the slope style event at the Sochi 2014 Olympics and is campaigning for 2018, and father Hamish, who has been coaching the boys this week, won gold at the 1984 and 1983 470 Worlds and bronze in 1982.
The scoreboard puts three-time World Champions Mat Belcher/Will Ryan (AUS) and Sofian Bouvet/Jeremie Mion (FRA) on tiebreak, from a redress decision due to a scoring error. Both teams were awarded third place, so in a unique situation they stepped up to the podium together to receive their medals and prizes.
"It's been good competition and apart from the first day's racing we were really happy with how we came back," said Belcher. "Overall, we're happy with our performance, but we're disappointed with the result. When you have won so many worlds, you want to win and that's what we are here for. It's a credit to the others and their performance and they seemed to handle conditions a bit better than we did. We learnt our lessons this week. It hurts a bit now, but we're looking forward to making a few changes and hopefully for the Games we'll be ready to go."
"This is our first medal at a World Championship," said Mion. "It was a tough medal race with very shifty wind and we succeeded to be top three at every mark throughout the medal race. We are very happy with how we sailed throughout the Championship and that it paid in the medal race."
470 Men Results: (top ten, full results here)
1. Sime Fantela/Igor Marenic (CRO 83)
2. Paul Snow-Hansen/Daniel Willcox (NZL 2)
3= Mathew Belcher/William Ryan (AUS 11)
3= Sofian Bouvet/Jérémie Mion (FRA 27)
5. Luke Patience/Chris Grube (GBR 868)
6. Gabrio Zandona/Andrea Trani (ITA 2)
7. Ferdinand Gerz/Oliver Szynmanski (GER10)
8. Panagiotis Mantis/Pavlos Kagialis (GRE 1)
9. Anton Dahlberg/Fredrik Bergström (SWE 349)
10. Onán Barreiros Rodríguez/Juan Curbelo Cabrera (ESP 9)
The medal presentations and closing ceremony took place at the Club Nautico San Isidro. After being presented with medals and prizes, sailors let their hair down with a spot of celebratory champagne spraying in true winners' style.
Next up for many teams is Trofeo Princesa Sofia, 25 March-2 April 2016, which will be the 470 Men and 470 Women European Continental Qualification with one nation quota awarded in each event, and the 470 Women African Continental Qualification also with one nation slot awarded. A few days off, and then teams will compete at the same venue for the 2016 470 European Championship from 5-12 April 2016.
Participating Nations: (teams from 6 continents / 27 nations)
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, France, Great Britain, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden, Turkey, USA.
Useful Links:
Two Silver Medals for New Zealand (from Jodie Bakewell-White, Yachting New Zealand)
New Zealand has won two silver medals at the 2016 470 World Championships in San Isidro, Argentina.
The two NZL Sailing Team crews of Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie, and Paul Snow-Hansen and Dan Willcox, both put in excellent medal race performances today to secure the silver medals in both the men's and women's championships.
The result is especially pleasing for New Zealand with the 2016 Rio Olympic Games less than six months away.
Men's 470
Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox won today's medal race to claim the silver medal in Argentina. It is New Zealand's first medal in the men's 470 Olympic discipline since 2002, and Snow-Hansen and Willcox's best World Champs result.
Making a dream start to the regatta with two race wins on the opening day, the pair then dropped in the standings after day three, but found form again over the second half of the six day series. In total, they won five of their eleven races including today's high pressure medal race.
Snow-Hansen and Willcox will have Olympic selectors taking notice with this performance. They're being coached in Argentina by Hamish Willcox, a three-time 470 World Champions himself in 1981, '83 and '84, and also coach to Peter Burling and Blair Tuke.
Snow-Hansen and Willcox's previous best result at a 470 World Championship Regatta came in 2013 when they placed 7th in La Rochelle, France and they admit to having worked very hard to improve over recent months putting in plenty of time with training partners like Aleh and Powrie, and young New Zealand crew Sam Barnett and Zak Merton.
Snow-Hansen attributes much of their success to the support team around them, saying, "We have to say a huge thanks to our coaches for doing some good work with us, and also the young boys Sam and Zak. We really appreciate all they have contributed to our campaign."
The Croatian pair of Sime Fantela and Igor Marenic took the men's title after placing 5th in today's medal race was enough to hold off the kiwi charge. France's Sofian Bouvet and Jérémie Mion took bronze relegating the Australian combination of Belcher and Ryan out of the medals.
Women's 470
Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie placed 3rd in the today's Women's 470 World Championship medal race to surpass the Austrians in the standings and win the silver medal in what they describe as one of the longest, toughest regattas they've sailed.
After dropping out of the top ten on day two, the reigning Olympic champions, hampered with Powrie feeling unwell and even losing her voice, still managed to rise through the standings, put themselves into medal contention and then sail well enough in the high pressure medal race to win the silver medal.
"Polly was incredible; I was so proud of her today. She was worried about letting us down, she was amazing. She called a few of the bits in the race that actually made the difference," said Jo Aleh after coming ashore.
"She could croak things out. She used up the last of her voice in the race. No, I'm really amazed with Polly's performance today."
Describing today's medal race Aleh says, "The French and the Brazilians were around so I think early on in the race we were third overall and we pulled it back to 2nd. We're pretty happy, it's been a long hard week for us so to come away with this is pretty good."
On this performance at World Championship level in an Olympic year Aleh comments; "Yeah, I think it is good. The good thing for us, is that there are so many things that we didn't get quite right this week. To still be able to pull off a silver medal feels good."
"We've got a lot of things to go and work on, so we'll do that and we'll be back fighting fit."
Initially Aleh and Powrie, who are supported by long-time coach Nathan Handley, are planning to recuperate from what has been a long, tough week of racing.
"It's a nice place here, but the weed and the sea plants – I've never seen anything like it really, I've been sailing for a long time. It's had its own unique challenges," adds Aleh talking about the venue and the bizarre infestation of water plants across the race courses.
"It's been one of the hardest regattas we've done in a long time, just really long days on the water and really hot."
Bronze medal for Mat Belcher and Will Ryan (from Cora Zillich, Australian Sailing)
Olympic gold medallist and six-time World Champion Mat Belcher (QLD) and three-time World Champion crew Will Ryan (QLD) have won the bronze medal at the 2016 470 World Championships, which concluded in Buenos Aires, Argentina overnight.
Croatias Sime Fantela and Igor Marenic took home the win with New Zealand's Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox finishing second and defending World Champions Mat Belcher and Will Ryan following in third.
France followed in fourth, one point behind Australia, but were awarded a bronze medal as well after a successful redress due to a Race Committee mistake in the French scoring over the last couple of days.
The Croatians were the last team to win a 470 World title in 2009, before the six-year run of World title success by Mat Belcher, three golds with Malcolm Page and three with Will Ryan. They led going into the Medal race with a 16 point advantage over the Australians, which Mat Belcher and Will Ryan were not able to surpass with a fourth place in the double-points Medal race to the Croatian's fifth.
"Today we went in with the chance to swing-chance the win. We definitely went out there and did our best and unfortunately, it just didn't go quite our way, which happens in racing. We look back now and we see plenty of opportunity through the week we could have capitalised on better, but that's what we have six months of training for so that it will be easier in Rio", Will Ryan said.
"It's been a pretty difficult week. We've had long days and obviously with some challenges we weren't quite prepared for and the weed has made it very difficult to race our normal style," he added looking back on the week.
The bronze medal wraps up a challenging week for the World #1 pair in tricky conditions in Argentina sailing out of Club Nautico in San Isidro on the Rio de La Plata. In a virtual 'sea of weed', the silt from the delta turns the water brown, making it very hard for the sailors to see the breeze on the water; add more than one knot of current, and the package certainly made for challenging racing across the fleets.
After a rough start to the regatta, the pair had a strong come back from 33rd overall on the first day to win the bronze medal.
"The weed has been a bit of the highlight of the event and it's been just tough racing and something we are not quite used to. The challenge for most of the sailors for the last couple of days has been staying out of trouble and like everyone else, we've been spending a lot of time clearing the weed this week to actually sail the race," Mat Belcher said referring to the added race track dynamic.
"It's been good competition and apart from the first day's racing we were really happy with how we came back. Overall, we're happy with our performance, but we're disappointed with the result. When you have won so many worlds, you want to win and that's what we are here for. It's a credit to the others and their performance and they seemed to handle conditions a bit better than we did. We learnt our lessons this week. It hurts a bit now, but we're looking forward to making a few changes and hopefully for the Games we'll be ready to go," reflected Belcher.
"I come from a string of World titles and this is a unique moment for Will and I as we haven't been through a situation where it hurt. This has really been the first time in a Medal race where we didn't get the result we wanted, so I think it's quite a good lesson."
The mistake we made in day one hurt, but as a team we regrouped and were able to put together a solid set of results. I think these lessons and this event will help us a lot going forward and I'm really excited where we are going as a team," Mat Belcher added confidently.
The bronze medal adds to Mat Belcher and Will Ryan's medal series with the pair having continuously finished on the podium at every sailing regatta they have competed in since getting together post the London 2012 Games. The pair has won the 2014 and 2015 Rio Test Events as well as the 2014 and 2015 Copa Brasil de Vela and remain undefeated on Rio waters with less than six months to go to the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
A total of three Australian Sailing men's crews were competing in Buenos Aires with Australian Sailing Squad's Patrick and Alexander Conway (NSW) finishing the event in 22nd and Victorians Tom Klemens and Tim Hannah in 34th.
Women's – 470
In the Women's fleet, Australian Sailing Team's Carrie Smith (WA) and Jaime Ryan (QLD) finished the regatta in overall 18th, while Australian Sailing Squad's new combination of Sasha Ryan (QLD) and Ella Clark (WA) finish ranked 26th.
"It's been a tough week for a lot of teams here, and for the race committee too as they tried their best to get in fair racing around shifty wind conditions and huge amounts of weed all week. This venue has definitely presented some unique challenges for everyone, and built up a new skill of foil-clearing in the fleet," Jaime Ryan said about the conditions in San Isidro.
And with regards to the racing she added: "We had a lot of good moments in the racing and managed to get a few good results on the board, but we missed a lot of opportunities around the track and made some silly mistakes that cost us, so it's disappointing to come away knowing we didn't sail our best."
While Mat Belcher and Will Ryan have already been selected to represent Australia in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in the men's 470 class, the women's crew is yet to be selected. Australian Sailing Team's Carrie Smith and Jaime Ryan, who are coached by Olympic gold medallist Nathan Wilmot (NSW), are vying for the spot and their selection over the next few months.
"With our ongoing selection process we were feeling the pressure to post a good result at this worlds, but although we didn't quite achieve that we have still come a long way from where we started sailing together a year and a half ago. We have learnt a huge amount from the racing here and ticked off a few of our key goals we had coming in, so we are happy to be improving and we'll take that away as a positive," Jaime Ryan said about the ongoing selection process.
The pair got back in the boat just before the 2015 World Championships after extended medical issues sidelined 2013 ISAF Youth World Champion Carrie Smith for most of last year. They secured the nation's place on the Olympic starting line last year after finishing ninth at the 2015 World Championships in Israel in October.
Team mates Sasha Ryan and Ella Clark have teamed up for this regatta and will continue racing the up coming European season which will make for an interesting Australian battle.
It is an interesting scenario as two sisters, Sasha and Jaime Ryan, face off against each other. Older sister Sasha is helming the new combination with crew Ella Clark, who won the 2013 Youth World Champion with Carrie Smith and has just returned to competition.
With brother Will Ryan sailing with Mat Belcher it is a unique situation to have three siblings campaigning together, something that does not always sit comfortably with Jaime as she competes against her sister: "To now be racing against Sasha is a very unique situation and maybe not the most ideal, but I think we try not to let it get too personal. It is just racing, and at the end of the day, the one who comes second is happy for the one that comes first. Sailing is pretty brutal in the selection process and we just have to be happy for each other and support each other."
The 470 crews will compete at the Trofeo Palma in Spain at the end of March next, followed by the European Championships and the Sailing World Cup in Hyères, France in April.