GBR Youth sailors crowned SL16 World Champions 

Rupert White and Tom Britz claim the SL16 World title in France

Rupert White and Tom Britz have today (Friday 6 July) been crowned SL16 World Champions as the RYA Volvo Youth National Squad sailors cruised to an emphatic world title with a race to spare at the SL16 World Championship 2012 in La Baule - LaPouliguen, France.  

The Youth sailors, who will represent RYA Volvo Team GBR at the 2012 ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships in Dublin, dominated the regatta on the opening day with a resounding four bullets to cement their position at the top of the leaderboard. The pair, who have only been sailing together for less than a year after Britz made the switch from the Laser Radial, followed this up with a consistent set of scores across the four day regatta.

"It is great. I am very happy," said White, who also picked up the silver medal with his former sailing partner Nikki Boniface at last year’s World Championships.

“To be honest it hasn’t really sunk in yet, it’s still quite strange to think we are world champions but I’m sure once we pick up our gold medal at the closing ceremony tonight it will start to feel a lot more real. It’s nice to win this year after narrowly missing out last year.”

With a sixth in today’s first race, White and Britz went onto finish the second race in third securing the world title, leaving the GBR pair to sail the last race knowing they were SL16 World Champions.

“After the second race had finished we looked over to our coach who signaled that we had done enough – it was a great feeling”, enthused White. “The last race was quite strange, it was pretty hard to concentrate on the first beat as our minds were all over the place,” laughed the 18-year-old from Brightlingsea.

The GBR duo will now head over to Dublin to join up with their fellow RYA Volvo Team GBR Squad members to begin preparations for the ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships which begin next week (12-21 July), although White confessed that this week was also preparation for Dublin.

“Our aims entering the event were to concentrate on improving our boat speed and to put in a set of consistent scores. Obviously we wanted to do well, but the key was to prepare as much as we could for the ISAF Youth Worlds, so to come away with the world title is fantastic.”

The World Championships welcomed multi-hull catamaran competitors from across the world, including 2011 SL16 World Champions Tristan Trebaol & Corentin Trebaol  from France and 2011 SL16 ISAF Youth World Champions Martin Lowy & Kim Andrade from Brazil.

Tom Britz, crew of the SL16 catamaran and from Lymington, added: “The competition has been tough this week, last year’s champions in both this event and at the ISAF Youth Worlds were here so we knew it was going to be challenging. It’s a great confidence boost to beat them, especially with the Dublin event just around the corner. However, we’ve got to keep our feet on the ground and can’t go over to Dublin thinking we can win gold again – we need to stick to our routines and concentrate on the task in hand, although it’s a great feeling knowing we’ve got one up on our rivals.”

Duncan Truswell, RYA Youth Racing Manager, commented: “I am really delighted for Ru and Tom winning the SL16 Worlds in France so convincingly. I know that they have been working really hard on the water training in the run up to the event throughout the spring, and also ashore in the gym and therefore I think it is really great to see all that hard work pay off.  

“The rest of RYA Volvo Team GBR and I very much look forward to congratulating them face to face when they arrive to start training with us on Sunday prior to the Four Star Pizza ISAF Youth Sailing World Championships which gets underway next Saturday.  

Truswell continued: “I know this will be a great confidence builder not just for them but for the whole team out here and the RYA Volvo National Youth Squad, and GBR National Junior squad sailors getting ready for the major events this summer  - it feels like the Summer is gathering momentum already after Georgie Povall's stunning performance out in Australia, and also some great performances out in Estonia with the RS:X Youth Europeans!”  

“Let's hope we can keep the results rolling in and get some national anthem practice prior to the Olympic team taking over the reins in August!” concluded Truswell.     

For more information on the SL16 World Championship 2012 and for full results visit the event website.  

For details regarding the RYA Volvo Youth Racing programme or for further details on future regattas, please visit the Youth Racing section of the RYA Website.