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District 20 Regatta Report | Sun Jan 22nd, 2012 through Sat Jan 28th, 2012 |
Podium at the Rolex MOCR. Photo by Rolex/Daniel Forster. |
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Event
website Video of start by Jock Fink Results for ten races and the medal race January 23-28 at Miami, Florida.
Day 1 Report: Heavy Lifting in Light Air
One team who doesn't have to worry about snagging an Olympic berth is Miami's own Mark Mendelblatt and Brian Fatih, who finished a solid 3-4 today in the Star class to take second overall on tied points with Sweden's leader Fredrik Loof/Max Salminen. They were named to the USA's 2012 Olympic Sailing Team after they recently finished third in their World Championship. "This is not a major regatta for us in the same regard, but we definitely want to train and improve our standing in the World Cup,' said Fatih, adding that this will be his first time to the Olympics after four times trying and Mendelblatt's second (in Laser class). For Loof/Salminen, today they practiced "no risk" sailing. "We were not hitting the corners or anything, just one thing at a time," said Loof, who added that he even wisely held back, but only "a bit," for the second start, which was black-flagged (meaning any boats over the line prematurely would be disqualified). "Our two goals were to have good starts and hold the lane for a while to control our own destiny on the first shift."
Day Three report: "Today we didn't have a great day," added Scheidt. "The first race was good because we were coming from behind, but the second race we wanted to start at the boat and got jammed there, so we had to start behind the pack and play catch-up the whole race. We managed to hold our lead, but there are still two races to go until the medal race. " As will happen at the Olympics, only the top-ten boats after tomorrow's racing will be allowed to progress to Saturday's single medal race, which will determine gold, silver and bronze medals.
Day Four: Melleby had said earlier in the week that the top ten here are so good that getting to the medal race would be tough. “We have here nine of the top 15 teams from Perth (where the most recent World Championships were held), so the fleet is quite strong.” With five of those now off the final-race roster, Melleby’s goal tomorrow will be to power through for a podium position.
Medal Race: Sneaking into the top-three overall, where they had not been all week, was France’s Xavier Rohart/Pierre Alexis Ponso, who finished second today. The performance secured them the silver medal with just the edge they needed over the bronze medalists Eivind Melleby/ Petter Moerland Pedersen (NOR), who finished sixth today and also had been in third at racing’s end yesterday. Losing what seemed to be a sure podium position going into today was Fredrik Loof/Max Salminen’s (SWE), who finished eighth in the medal race and fell to fourth overall from second yesterday, only one point out of medal reach. "The wind made a big shift to the left on the first beat," said Scheidt, "but we weren’t there. We were trying to cover the Swedish, and then we were able to tack on them two times and bounce them to the right. Then the left paid big, and we managed to round sixth at the top mark. From then on our race was a little more comfortable, but we were still afraid of the French who were doing really well. We climbed to fourth, and they were in third; in the end, we nailed a third and the French got second." Scheidt added that all of the top four teams plus more here will be competing at the Olympics, "and they will be stronger, so I think it was very nice for us to win the first regatta of the year. It gives us confidence but we know we have a long way to go until Weymouth." |
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ISCYRA Central
Office 2812 Canon Street San Diego, California 92106 USA Phone: +1 619 222 0252 Fax: +1 619 222 0528 SKYPE: star.class.office office@starchampionships.org |
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