Tough sledding at 470 Worlds

Enoshima, Japan (August 5, 2019) – Two back to back races kicked off the 2019 470 World Championships and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Qualification event, after yesterday’s opening day was abandoned due to no wind.

Following a 1 hour postponement ashore, the 470 Women and 470 Men Yellow and Blue qualifying fleets headed out to course area Sagami where the light weather conditions and wave swell made sure there was no margin for errors on Enoshima Bay.

Racing resumes tomorrow at 1200 hours local time with three races scheduled for the Men and Women.fleets.

470 WOMEN – 39 Teams
Spain’s Silvia Mas/Patricia Cantero top the women’s fleet from a consistent scorecard of 3,3. The defending 470 Women’s World Champions, Ai Kondo Yoshida/Miho Yoshioka (JPN), were satisfied with scores of 10,2 to end the day second overall on the leader board, on tiebreak advantage over Linda Fahrni/Maja Siegenthaler of Switzerland. The Swiss, who are attempting to secure their second Olympic appearance, launched their assault to seal their names on one of the six women’s nation qualification places with finishes of 6,6.

Top North Americans are Carmen and Emma Cowles (USA) in 19th after scores of 27,8.

470 MEN – 52 Teams
Precision teamwork from Sweden’s Anton Dahlberg Dahlberg/Fredrik Bergström in the 52 boat men’s fleet, rewarded the pair with scores of 3,2 to lead overall. Second to Hungary’s Balazs Gyapjas/Zsombor Gyapjas, whose performance in race 2 marked only their second ever career win at World Championship level. Their day’s racing places them in second overall and in a strong position as the brothers attempt to claim one of the four Tokyo 2020 nation qualification places. Pleasing the home fans, Japan’s Keiju Okada/Jumpei Hokazono are in third from scores of 1,27 on an 8 point tiebreak with the Hungarians. The teams in 4th and 5th also count 8 point scores, but the scoring gives the advantage to the teams holding the race wins.

Top North Americans are Stu McNay and David Hughes (USA) in 19th after scores of 14,6.

Tokyo 2020 Olympics
With a quota that limits entries at Tokyo 2020 (19 for men, 21 for women), the Worlds is the the second Olympic qualification event and will select six nations in the women and four in the men. For the nations already qualified, click here.

This is also the first event to determine the USA representative for the men and women, though the USA has not yet gained entry in the women’s event for Tokyo 2020. For details on the plan, click here.

Event details – Entry list – Results – Facebook

Racing at the 470 Worlds for the 91 teams from 29 nations is from August 4 to 9 after which Enoshima will host the Olympic Test Event on August 15-22 and then onto 2020 World Cup Series Round 1 – Enoshima from August 25 to September 1.

Representing North America:
MEN:
Joshua Yale/ Michael Montagnese (CAN)
Stuart McNay/ David Hughes (USA)
Trevor Davis/ Trevor Bornarth (USA)

WOMEN:
Nikole Barnes/ Lara Dallman-Weiss (USA)
Emily Bornarth/ Laura Slovensky (USA)
Carmen Cowls/ Emma Cowles (USA)
Atlantic Brugman/ Nora Brugman (USA)

Background: Designed in 1963 by the Frenchman André Cornu as a modern fiberglass planing dinghy, the International 470 Class is the class of boat used for both the men’s two person and women’s two person dinghy events at the Olympic Games. Used as Olympic equipment since 1976, where the class was sailed as an open event before the introduction of separate events for men and women in 1988, the 470 is sailed in more than 60 nations around the world.

Source: Luissa Smith