Sail Melbourne Results

The Australian Sailing Team have won medals of all colours and welcomed a new member to the team on the final day of Sail Melbourne, the opening round of the ISAF Sailing World Cup.

Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page won Gold in the 470 class in a race which the top four crews went into with everything to play for.

The reigning 470 World Champions started the day in third position, two points behind leaders Schmid and Reichstaedter of Austria and just one adrift of Americans McNay and Biehl with fellow Australians Sam Kivell and Will Ryan fourth.

The equation was simple, whoever won the race would win the regatta.

Belcher and Page got off to a great start and were leading the fleet from Kivell and Ryan before a major wind shift forced the Race Committee to abandon the race.

In the second start Belcher and Page found themselves down the leaderboard but fought back to take the race win and their third straight Sail Melbourne title.

Kivell and Ryan crossed the line in third position to win the bronze medal, with the Americans winning Silver.

“We just wanted to keep clear at the start and make sure we got the first shift and then follow on from there,” said Belcher. “We were a little bit back at the first mark, chipped our way through and managed to win.”

Page said; “There was no way we were going to let them win it easily and got the accelerator going on that first downwind. We got our own set of waves and it was nice to be able to show that bit of edge when we needed it and bring it back through the fleet.”

“We made it hard on ourselves a couple of days ago but fought back yesterday and it came down to who beat who, it was great to do it and great to be able to come from behind,” said Page.

In the Laser fleet three-time World Champion Tom Slingsby started the day in third position and had plenty of work to do to get ahead of Australian Sailing Development Squad member Tom Burton in second with Nick Thompson of Great Britain in the box seat in first position.

In the light shifty breeze Burton crossed the line sixth, doing enough to win the Silver medal with Slingsby just behind in eighth to cement himself in third overall. Thompson finished behind the Australian pair in ninth but had done enough to win the Gold medal.

“Finishing second was the goal leading in to today,” said Burton. “I didn’t think I’d catch Nick Thompson and was really pleased to come away with second.”

Burton’s finish has qualified him for the 2011 Australian Sailing Team, joining Slingsby in the Laser class.

“The goal for any sailor is to try and get on the team, it the best team in world with some of the best sailors, I’m very happy to be on it and this year I’ll try and get some repeat performances in Europe and see how we go from there,” he said.

Slingsby said that the light conditions made it tough for the entire fleet.

“We only had about two knots of breeze so we were drifting upwind with the current and them gybing downwind to make some waves and move ourselves along,” said Slingsby. “It was a lottery today and Tom Burton was a bit quicker through the water.”

In the Skud18 fleet Australian Sailing Team crews brought home the Silver and Bronze medals with Ame Barnbrook and Lindsay Mason finishing one place ahead of compatriots Daniel Fitzgibbon and WAIS athlete Rachel Cox.

Australian Sailing Development Squad member Matthew Bugg won Bronze in the 2.4M class, finishing on a high by winning the final race of the regatta.

Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen were fourth in the 49er class after finishing fifth in the medal race. The 2009 World Champions needed to beat Erik Storck and Trevor Moore to be able to take third place off them but the Americans won the medal race and the Bronze medal.

The pair will now take a break from the 49er class after four regattas in just over a month, which began with back-to-back victories at the Perth International Regatta and Australian 49er Championship before finishing second at Sail Sydney last week.

In the RS:X class Jessica Crisp finished fifth overall after being judged to be over the line at the start of the race while Krystal Weir climbed up to eighth overall in the Laser Radials after finishing second in the medal race.

The ISAF Sailing World Cup now moves to round two in Miami at the end of January.

– Yachting Australia