Patience and Glanfield in pole heading into Hyeres finals series racing
Written by RYA | 23 April 2013
470 duo advance to Hyeres finals series with a 'zero points' scorecard
Olympic silver medallists Luke Patience and Joe Glanfield recorded the perfect scoreline from their two 470 class races at the Hyeres World Cup on Tuesday (23 April) to head into the second phase of the regatta in pole position.
The new pairing, who competed together for the first time at the Palma World Cup earlier this month, comfortably won both of their races to top the leaderboard at the end of the qualifying series, and as such will take forward a score of zero points into finals series racing which starts on Wednesday.
“It’s been great today,” Glanfield admitted. “We’ve had really nice conditions and, in a way, today and yesterday has filled a void a little bit of what we didn’t see in Palma, so it’s helped us tick all the boxes of seeing every different wind range and every different sea state.”
“The sport’s so complex and so dynamic, I don’t think you ever stop learning every time you go out on the water,” said Patience on the learning curve of the sport and of being in a fledgling team.
“It’s so rare to have repetition and be able to see the same things time and time again. That takes many, many, many years, and even Joe hasn’t reached that age yet I don’t think!” Patience joked of his 33-year-old teammate.
In spite of their good position heading into the business end of the regatta, Glanfield is yet to be convinced of the experimental scoring formats being trialled at the Palma and Hyeres World Cup events.
“Essentially it all does still start again tomorrow. We’ve qualified and we’re in a good position, but it counts for very little as it only goes through as one race,” the Athens and Beijing silver medallist explained.
“It would still be nicer if we kept all of our results and took them all through, and it certainly would reward us because we haven’t had a bad race yet.
“But it is what it is, and at this stage it really doesn’t matter for us because we’re really just trying to learn and improve and find out what we need to be better at.”
The British Sailing Team’s other new 470 combination – Nick Rogers and Elliot Willis – head into the finals series in 13th place overall with an eighth and a seventh added to their scorecard from the two races today.
In the new women’s 49erFX class, three British boats are poised in the top ten going into the final series. Charlotte Dobson and Mary Rook are in second overall, with results of first and a third sandwiching a premature start in the second race of the day.
In spite of their second-race blip, Rook is happy with their progress so far this week in what’s only the British squad’s second 49erFX regatta. The eight girls are switching helm and crew combinations for each event to learn which pairings work best together in these early days of the class.
“I’m really surprised and happy actually that we’ve managed to do so well and we managed to keep our speed going despite being quite heavy [as a crew],” said Rook of her partnership with Dobson this week.
“But I’m really looking forward to there being some wind so that I’m allowed to trapeze and hopefully we’ll have a bit more speed!”
“I love skiff racing – it’s really fast and there’s loads of places to take, always – a race is never over until you really have finished,” Rook continued.
“It’s really good fun, especially when there’s a bit more wind. Our second regatta is going really well, we’re learning a lot and learning about each other, so by the end of the summer hopefully we’ll be in a lot better position to choose who we want to sail with and go out and do well at the events.”
Frances Peters and Nicola Groves are in fourth place currently in the FX standings, with Penny Clark and Sophie Ainsworth sixth after six qualifying series races.
Giles Scott is second overall in the Finn standings, with a race win and a second for Andrew Mills helping him into seventh overall, while in the women’s RS:X windsurfing, Bryony Shaw is in second overall with 4,12,3 on the water today.
Overnight leaders Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign are placed third overall in the 49er fleet, with Dave Evans-Ed Powys in fourth, Stevie Morrison-Ben Rhodes in seventh and the new pairing of Nic Asher-Fynn Sterritt in eighth.
In the Laser Radial fleet, Chloe Martin and Alison Young both take top ten positions through into the final series. Martin is fifth overall and Young ninth, having had to retire from the second race on Tuesday after picking up a second yellow flag penalty.
In the Nacra 17 mixed multihull class, Lucy Macgregor and Tom Phipps are in sixth overall with Ben Saxton and Hannah Diamond advancing to seventh after their three races. Sophie Weguelin and Eilidh McIntyre are ninth in the 470 women’s event.
RYA Youth National Champion Kieran Martin is 13th overall in the RS:X men’s windsurfing event, while Elliot Hanson has advanced to 16th in the Laser fleet.
Meanwhile in the Paralympic classes, Helena Lucas and Megan Pascoe are in second and third respectively in the 2.4mR class, and John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas are in fifth overall in the Sonar class.
Racing at the ISAF Sailing World Cup, Hyeres, continues on Wednesday 24 April, with the final medal deciders on Saturday 27 April.
For the latest news and information, visit www.britishsailingteam.com follow us on Twitter (@BritishSailing) for race updates during the regatta.