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4 April 2005, 11:32 am

COL Claims Victory

Algarve Cup 2005

Vilamoura, Portugal

Sebastian COL (FRA) swept to victory in the ISAF Grade 2 Algarve Cup defeating home sailor Tiago ROQUETTE three-nil in the final. By improving on his third position from last year the Frenchman looks set to continue his impressive climb up the ISAF World Match Race Rankings.

COL, Tiago ROQUETTE, another Portuguese sailor, Afonso DOMINGOS and Spaniard Jordi CALAFAT emerged from the round robin with DOMINGOS looking on the best form after victory in all bar one (against COL) of his seven flights. DOMINGOS faltered in the semi-final however and was left with a third-place match against CALAFAT, where he was able to give the Portuguese fans something to cheer about with a two-one victory.

After the elimination Russian, Maxim TARANOV, in the round robin COL was the only top-fifty ranked sailor left in the competition and he went on to prove his pedigree with a comfortable victory in the final.

Ranked 105 in the ISAF World Match Race Rankings on 31 October 2003, COL has consistently climbed the rankings and broke into the top-twenty for the first time in the last rankings of 2004 and has kept his improvement going by moving to 16 on 14 January and then up to 14 in the latest rankings of 23 March. Victory at the weekend will mean COL is sure to be knocking at the door of the top ten in the next rankings release scheduled for 4 May.

World Sailing TV

Lithuania's Juozas Bernotas came out on top in the Men's RS:X whilst Russia's Stefania Elfutina was triumphant in the Women's RS:X. Both sailors claim the first Abu Dhabi ISAF Sailing World Cup Final spots whilst Jock Calvert (AUS) and Joanna Sterling (AUS) picked up the Oceanic spots for the Emirati finale.

A tight group of five young Papua New Guinean (PNG) Laser sailors are stepping up their 2015 Pacific Games competition program using this week's ISAF Sailing World Cup Melbourne. PNG is one of 33 countries represented at the important Oceanic event, the largest Olympic sailing regatta in the southern hemisphere.