A BIG high to finish the season!
Written by Annie Lush | 30 September 2010
Last week we finished our season on a high.... A BIG high...
After disappointment in August at losing the quarter finals at Skandia Sail for gold, and therefore our chance of a medal, we had set our sights on bringing home a medal from the World Championships in Newport.
The event was to be sailed in Sonars, which meant we needed an extra crew member and a serious crash course in Sonar sailing!
We asked Mary Rook to join our team, took a week off after Sail for Gold, then set about training in the USA and at home. Luckily John Robertson and his team know a few things about Sonars, and kindly lent us their boats and advice.
The event, held from New York Yacht Club in Newport, was run impeccably, from the breakfasts to being housed by the Commodore himself! We started the event well, winning our group with nine straight wins, putting us into the gold group. The top six round was very tight and we won the group, just, on a tie break with 3 other teams. This put us racing the Dutch team (newly ranked number 1 in the world) in the quarters. We won these 3-1 despite being disqualified from the first race after not seeing a change of windward mark signal during a hectic leeward mark rounding.
Next we faced Claire Leroy (previous double World Champion and currently ranked 2nd) in the semi-finals. As expected, the races were very close, but in the building breeze and waves we eventually gained control downwind in the fourth match and managed to trap Claire in order to take our penalty before finishing, putting us into the finals.
Sally Barkow and her team had defeated Nicky Souter, the previous World Champion (and Sail for Gold winner) in their semis matches 3-0. We knew it would be a tough fight with the American team as we’d trained against them earlier this month and they’d proven to be very fast throughout the regatta. We struggled with our starts in the first few matches with a building current forcing us to the line early, and had to fight from the less favourable left side of the course.
After 3 matches we were 2-1 down and attacking from behind in the 4th match where we managed to keep the race close and apply enough pressure to force the Americans into a penalty situation at the 2nd windward mark, passing them on the final downwind to take the score to 2-2.
The breeze continued to build into the final race to 20 knots, with plenty of waves to surf on. Working with Ian Williams, our coach, on our previous starting errors, we finally won the favoured right side and lead the race, extending downwind to take the World Championship title.
We are thrilled with the result and I was especially proud to finally have the British Anthem playing at the Women’s Worlds, (having stood on the podium twice before for the American anthem where I'd been part of Sally Barkow's team).
After a long season we feel our hard work has paid off and whilst the racing was not in Elliotts it couldn’t have been closer, proving the amount of work we need to continue to put in from now to stay ahead.
Next we’re off to Bermuda to race the boys on the World Match Tour at the Gold Cup before heading home to Weymouth to get back to Elliott sailing.
Annie x