Burton firms lead at Laser Men’s Worlds

Sakaiminato City, Japan (July 8, 2019) – After ten races, Australia’s Tom Burton holds an 18-point lead over his nearest competitor, Jean-Baptiste Bernaz from France, going into the final day of the 2019 ILCA Laser Standard Men’s Worlds. Two final races are scheduled for tomorrow to determine the world champion.

With little wind across Miho Bay, sailors were held on shore to start the day, waiting for conditions to improve. The forecasts did not look promising, but shortly after noon a nice 9-knot northeast breeze filled and allowed the three fleets – Gold, Silver, and Bronze – to complete the two scheduled finals series races.

The races were completed quickly as, amazingly, all three fleets got away on their first starting attempt for both races. Additionally, the second discard is now permitted which has been a bonus for many competitors.

In the first Gold Fleet race, Germany’s Nik Willim showed good pace both upwind and downwind to take first place and earn life-long bragging rights to having won a race in the Gold Fleet at a Laser World Championship.

In the early part of the race, Willim battled Ireland’s Ewan McMahon for the lead, but as it turns out, McMahon was disqualified for being over the starting line early. The consistent form of Jean-Baptiste Bernaz once again allowed him to move to through the fleet to secure a second place finish ahead of USA’s Charlie Buckingham in third. Kaarle Tapper finished fourth in what turned out to be an excellent day for the young sailor from Finland.

The wind held steady at around 9 knots for the start of the day’s second Gold Fleet race. Australia’s Matt Wearn, who had posted a 30th place finish (his discard score) in the day’s first race, found some vindication to take the win. Wearn led at the first mark and then extended his lead to finish comfortably in front, nearly two minutes ahead of the next finisher.

With a clean start and near perfect upwind tactics, Buckingham capped off an exceptional day of sailing to take second place behind Wearn. Combined with his third place finish in the previous race, Buckingham won the day and moved up to forth place overall from 17th where he started day, and now sits just three points out of second.

Tapper again showed great form to finish third, and similarly made a big move up the leaderboard from 20th place yesterday to ninth place today. Bernaz sailed to an 11th place finish, a score that was good enough to move him into second place overall in the championship.

With the final two races scheduled for tomorrow, Burton sits in a comfortable position – as much as leading a world championship can be comfortable – and with a 13th place discard in the final series, he looks to need only one more top-ten finish tomorrow to claim the world title. But with only 15 points separating second from tenth place overall, the battle for the remaining podium spots will be much tighter.

In parallel with the battle for the podium, a second battle is occurring as sailors work to secure one of five available berths for their respective countries to send a representative to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Although he fell out of the top-ten today, in 15th place Jesper Stalheim is in a good position to secure Sweden a spot in the 2020 games. Hungary in 16th and Argentina in 17th are also well placed at the moment. Rounding out the current top-five qualifying countries are Russia and Guatemala in 20th and 21st places respectively. However, consistent finishes are proving hard to come by in the competitive Gold Fleet and the standing could certainly change after two more races.

The championship continues tomorrow with two more final series races scheduled.

Day Five Results (Top 10 of 156; 10 races; 2 discards)
1. Tom Burton AUS 32 pts
2. Jean-Baptiste Bernaz FRA 44 pts
3. Matthew Wearn AUS 52 pts
4. Charlie Buckingham USA 53 pts
5. Philipp Buhl GER 54 pts
6. George Gautrey NZL 58 pts
7. Sam Meech NZL 59 pts
8. Thomas Saunders NZL 61 pts
9. Kaarle Tapper FIV 63 pts
10. Nick Thompson GBR 65 pts

Event details – Results – Facebook

The 2019 Laser Standard Rig World Championship has attracted a 159 entries for the 12 race series on July 4-9 in Sakaiminato City, Japan. With 57 countries represented, this is a mandatory boat charter event though sailors bring their own rigging. Seventeen entries are from North America: Canada (6), Mexico (1), Trinidad and Tobago (1), and USA (9).

This event is also being used by many countries to determine their athlete for this event at Tokyo 2020 Olympics. For the USA procedure, click here.

Source: ILCA