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8 February 2010
Report by Nicky Souter
The Miami OCR Regatta was the first event on the World Cup tour for the
Women’s Match Racing Olympic Class for 2010. Although we haven’t been
competing internationally for the last few months, we have made the
most of our perfect summer sailing conditions on Sydney Harbour
training 3-4 times a week.
Coming into Miami, we were very eager to see how our training over the summer had progressed and see how we compared to the international team since most countries have now got their fleet of the modified Elloit 6’s.
With my team consisting of trimmer Stacey Jackson and on bow, Rayshele Martin, we secured 4th place in the Women’s Match Race (WMR) discipline at the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta against an elite field of contenders.
What a tough field of competition! With Women’s Match Racing now included in the 2012 Olympics – the level of competition has certainly raised, with many past Olympians now turned their focus onto Women’s Match Racing. Included in the solid field were current World Number One Claire Leroy, Olympic Laser Gold Medallist Anna Tunnicliffe, Olympic Yngling Silver Medallist Mandy Muller, former Women’s Match Racing World Champion Sally Barkow, 2009 World Cup Champion Lucy MacGregor plus not to mention our Australian Sailing Development Squad teammate Lucinda Whitty and her crew. With 24 teams competing at the event and only eight boats, the field was broken down into three pools of eight teams in order to complete the heavy race schedule. With each pool seeded based on previous results, the competition in each group was red-hot.
After two training days hosted at the Key Biscayne Yacht Club, Day One started off slowly due to inclement weather. Our team remained aboard the coach boat for the duration of the day to cheer on our fellow team mates who were placed in Group A. Following several delays for the weather, racing finally started only completing four races of their scheduled.
Day Two became a little more eventful, in a rush to complete the scheduled racing; our pool (Group C) completed all seven of our round robin races. Still shaking off the dust from six months without solid racing, we managed to make it through the round robin suffering only one defeat at the hands of German sailor Silke Hahlbrock. Completing our round with a 6-1 score sheet, we succeeded to the top of our group and secured a pass to the Gold Fleet Quarter finals.
Prior to proceeding to the Quarter Finals, Day Three saw yet another round robin series held for the top two qualifiers from each group, in order to seed the competitors. At the conclusion of this series we qualified 3rd into the Quarter Finals. A seeding of 3rd meant an ANZAC showdown between the young New Zealander Sam Osborne. Osborne came out with guns blazing to take the first match, and us taking the 2nd match.
On Day 4, we had our eyes focused on reaching the semi finals and we made no mistakes. We beat the kiwis in the next 2 races, securing us a spot in the semi finals.
As the field narrowed down to the semi finals, the competition became more intense, we were to take on reigning Laser Radial Olympic Gold Medallist Anna Tunnicliffe. Tunnicliffe has made the transition to the Women’s Match Racing discipline in the hope of representing her country again at the London 2012 Olympics. The Americans were quick off the mark scoring wins in the first two races. However, we retaliated to even the scoreline 2-2. The final race was a cliffhanger, with both our team testing our boat-handling skills and matching our opponent the race was determined on the line, Tunnicliffe was through to the Final by half a boatlength. In the other Semi-Final, Lucy MacGregor from the United Kingdom had a decisive victory over French opponent Claire Leroy.
After pushing Anna to the limit, we were confident with our preparation for the match against Leroy. Things certainly went our way and we took victory in the first match of the Petit Final. However, after getting the tiniest of breaks at the start of races two and three, the French capitalised and claimed the concluding two races and 3rd place overall. In the Final, the Brits took two early wins and seemed to be proceeding to a comfortable victory over the Americans. In race three the tables turned, and a resurgent Tunnicliffe went on to claim three races in a row and the title of Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta Champion.
With the aim of securing a berth in the Semi-Finals my team had achieved our regatta goal, however a podium position would have been the icing on the cake. We have now return to Australia for further training in the lead up to several domestic regattas including the Marinassess and the New Zealand Women’s Match Racing Nationals before embarking on our 2010 European Tour in late March.
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