Snakes and ladders for GBR on day four of the 470 Worlds
Written by RYA | 08 August 2013
Mixed fortunes for British crews as 470 medal hunt intensifies
It was a day of mixed fortunes for Britain’s sailors on day four of the 470 World Championships in La Rochelle (Thursday 8 August), with Luke Patience and Joe Glanfield continuing their progress up the leaderboard, while false starts and equipment breakages dented the title hopes of others.
Patience and Glanfield enjoyed a steady day amid tough sea breeze conditions at the French venue to move themselves into third overall with two days to go, while defending champions Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark picked up two premature start (OCS) penalties from their three races of the day, and now face an uphill battle to make the eight-boat medal race on Saturday.
Patience and Glanfield, the European silver medallists competing in their first World Championship together, scored 14,3,6 from their three races to advance into the overall bronze medal position behind local heroes Pierre Leboucher and Nicolas Le Berre and Australia’s defending World Champion Mat Belcher, competing with new crew Will Ryan.
“It’s just such a tricky venue,” Patience explained. “Every race we’re looking and trying to predict what we think will be the right thing to do and every race we’re not entirely sure. So today was really a big day to come out at the end of it and say we’re living to fight another day and we’ve not done anything too disastrous.
“That sounds slightly negative almost that we’re thinking of it in that way but it’s so high scoring that just to be able to come out and fight another day means it’s a good day – and that’s what we did!”
“It is a new partnership, it’s our first World Championships together, and by that logic our first ‘pressured’ regatta together,” the 27-year-old continued.
“Things are moving quite seamlessly between us at the moment, and the work we’ve put in so far this year is showing and we’re dead pleased that that has made a difference - especially at a venue which has proved to be so tricky. These foundations make the difference when the chips are down in a race.
“The chips have been down in a race more than once this regatta, and probably more than once for every boat here so a strong partnership has paid off in that sense.”
In contrast, Nick Rogers and Elliot Willis had a difficult day with scores of 16,13 from their first two races before a boom breakage forced them out of the final race of the day. They’re now in 13th with a strong day needed on Friday if they’re to make the top eight for Saturday’s medal racing. Mike Wood and Hugh Brayshaw, the young Podium Potential pairing, improved to 18th overall with 7,9,17 from their day.
In the women’s fleet, Sophie Weguelin and Eilidh McIntyre advanced to seventh overall with 16,1,7 on the board, but it was a day of ‘almosts’ for Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark, who will now have a fight on their hands to reach the top eight on Saturday.
They crossed the finish line second in their opening race of the day but were adjudged to have been over the startline early – a mistake which then repeated itself in the second race when they otherwise would have taken the gun ahead of teammates Weguelin and McIntyre.
The defending champions redeemed themselves to some extent with a fifth in the third and final race of the day, but with an overall 16th position will need some luck tomorrow if their regatta is to continue into the eight-boat final.
“In terms of learning from our mistakes from yesterday and moving forward today, our decisions around the racecourse were much better, we were thinking about things ahead of time which we feel we’ve been quite bad at this week,” Clark explained.
“Unfortunately in a three-race day we had two OCSs. We actually felt like we’d sailed a really good day, but we’ve come off the water with one score and two loads of letters so not a great day.”
The Olympic silver medallist continued: “We’ve got two races left, so still a sizeable chunk of the regatta left, and we know we’ve just got to have a look at the scores really and see what kind of risks it might be worth taking to make the top eight for the medal race, because we’d like to be medal racing on Saturday.
“We’ll see if that’s possible and just kind of weigh that up and see what we can do tomorrow.”
The 470 World Championships continues with two further races from 1400 on Friday (9 August) to determine the top eight boats in each fleet feature in Saturday’s double-points scoring medal races.
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