Brits face tough battle for 470 Worlds podium
Written by RYA | 09 August 2013
Patience-Glanfield and Weguelin-McIntyre make 470 Worlds medal race cut in fifth
British crews will face a tough battle for the podium in the final medal races for the 470 World Championships in La Rochelle, France, on Saturday (10 August).
Sophie Weguelin and Eilidh McIntyre sailed a steady two races on Friday to advance into fifth place, ten points from the podium spots in the women’s fleet, while Luke Patience and Joe Glanfield endured a ‘frustrating’ day, with scores of 15 and a discardable 33rd damaging their medal hopes at their first World Championship together.
The European silver medallists were third heading into the day, and are now 13 points from the podium positions, but while a medal remains a possibility in the eight-boat, double-points final races, they’re not giving up hope.
“It’s a bit of a long shot,” the double Olympic silver medallist Glanfield admitted.
“In many respects our chance of a medal was sorted out today and unfortunately we’re a long way off, but never say never.
“As we saw today people can rack up some big points quickly and I’m sure that will be the same in the medal race. We’ll just try and have a rest tonight and recover, get our heads in gear and do the best we can tomorrow.”
Patience, who stood on the Olympic podium with Stuart Bithell exactly one year ago tomorrow (Saturday), remains resolute that the new team is moving in the right direction and is proud of their progress on this early stage of the Rio cycle.
“You win some you lose some and today we lost some,” said the Heleneburgh sailor. “We’re still pleased with where we’re at as a team and we’re pleased with our week, but it stings a bit right now.”
“Ultimately the day didn’t form in the way that the forecast was predicting and in the way that we were expecting. That is always a challenge in our sport – our engine is invisible! The one thing we’re trying to predict is invisible. We didn’t do it very well today. We executed what we said we’d do, but what we said we’d do was slightly off from what the right thing to do was.”
“It isn’t over, it is one more race, and like Joe said it is a mathematical possibility. It’s a big ask, but we’ll see.”
Glanfield’s former helm Nick Rogers and his new crew Elliot Willis made a valiant final attempt at making the medal race cut, but 14,6 wasn’t quite enough and they finish their first regatta in tenth place, while Podium Potential pairing Mike Wood and Hugh Brayshaw had a respectable 16th in their first senior World Championships.
In the women’s fleet, European bronze medallists Sophie Weguelin and Eilidh McIntyre advanced from their overnight position of seventh to head into the final day in fifth overall and with a theoretical chance of silver.
“We’ve had some good races, some bad races and we’ve learnt a lot of lessons along the way so far this week so we’re really happy to be racing tomorrow,” explained the 24-year-old Weguelin.
“The points are very close around us so I guess we’ll just need to sail our own race.
“We’ve done a lot of medal races this year, and I think we just need to take confidence from how well we’ve done so far this season and turn that into something tomorrow hopefully.”
After their double false start penalties yesterday, Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark had an uphill battle to qualify for the medal race in their first regatta back since the Olympics.
Heading into the day in 16th, they pulled up to 12th overall with 10,4 from their final two races. The Podium Potential duo of Amy Seabright and Ann Carpenter finished 21st.
The final 470 World Championship medal races are scheduled to take place from 1400 (local) tomorrow with the women’s fleet first up, followed by the men’s medal race from 1445.
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For full results and further event information, visit http://worlds.470.org