Final three days at Niner-Nacra Worlds

Geelong, Australia (February 12, 2020) – The third day at the 2020 49er, 49erFX, and Nacra 17 World Championship awoke to steady rain, grey skies and mist which affected visibility on Corio Bay. It’s been a rare sight at these championships but finally the sun broke through and up to 18 knots of SSE puffy magic blessed the afternoon session.

While the 34-boat Nacra 17 fleet competes as one division for the title, this was the final day of qualifying for the two skiff divisions with the top 25 teams advancing to vie for their championship crowns. Three days of racing remain for all three fleets.

49er & 49erFX
Reigning 49er world champions and Rio 2016 Gold medallists, Peter Burling and Blair Tuke (NZL), bagged enough low scores in the qualification round to lead at the midway point.

“It’s good to get through the qualifying series with some low scores, we didn’t sail our best at times, but we had some pretty good comebacks to make up for it. It was pretty tricky out there, plenty of shifts,” sand Burling. “Tomorrow looks pretty similar in terms of the forecast – it should be nice. All the good guys are still here and pushing hard.”

Chasing they are, as the top six teams through qualifying were all in the top eight at the 2019 Worlds.

Austria’s Benjamin Bildstein and David Hussl tallied an equally low score to the frontrunners and the Spanish duo of Diego Botin and Iago Lopez Marra finished a strong third overall.

Worth highlighting are the three Danish teams in the top 15, the best of those Mads Emil Lubeck and Nikolaj Hoffman Buhl, while Andrew Mollerus and Ian MacDiarmid in eighth overall lead the USA contingent with four teams qualifying for gold flight.

In the women’s 49erFX, Great Britain’s Charlotte Dobson and Saskia Tidey are keeping up their winning moves to be lead boat.

“Today was a great day; It was about being as consistent as possible,” Dobson said. “We went super low risk and let our pace do the talking. The real racing is starting tomorrow though with gold, so it’s now rest recover and go again. There will be less space now and mistakes will be punished so we need to avoid them.”

Second in the FX is Tamara Echegoyen/Paula Barcelo (ESP) and third is Anne-Julie Schutt/Iben Nielsby (DEN). While Paris Henken and Anna Tobias (USA) posted a 1-4-1 to blast from 31st to eighth, current world champs Annemiek Bekkering and Annette Deutz (NED) sit down in 14th overall.

Nacra 17
Leaders John Gimson and Anna Burnet (GBR) are stringing together a set of scores that must be troubling the competition, but they demonstrated they aren’t bullet-proof in the third race today. “Two wins; chuffed with that but then in last race we made a stupid mistake. We made a slightly late decision to tack and went swimming. But we are sailing well, and we need to keep this form. We say it’s all about the averages and it’s not done until the final race.”

Next up is Nathan and Haylee Outteridge (AUS) after collecting a pair of second places and a 17th in the first race, which becomes their drop. Race tactics include dealing with the weed as Nathan explains: “We did not think we had that much weed on our foils early on in the race, but it ended up being around 50% of yesterday’s level. Once we started to clear it, our results improved dramatically.”

Third Nacra is Quentin Delapierre and Manon Audient (FRA) and fourth are the current world champions Vittorio Bissaro and Maelle Frascari (ITA).
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Six days of racing is planned for February 10 to 15.

Event details: https://49er.org/event/2020-world-championship/

Results: 49er Men – 49erFX Women – Nacra 17 Mixed

Source: Lisa Ratcliff/Worlds media

Tokyo 2020 Selection: The Worlds will finalize nomination for the USA Tokyo Team, with the finish position in this event to be added to the points total for selection. See the asterisk below for the team holding the advantage after day three:

Nacra 17 (6 races): 15. Riley Gibbs/ Anna Weis*; 17. Sarah Newberry/ David Liebenberg; 27. Ravi Parent/ Caroline Atwood
49er (6 races): 7. Andrew Mollerus/ Ian MacDiarmid; 15. Ian Barrows/ Mitchell Kiss*; 17. Harry Melges/ Finn Rowe; 24. Nevin Snow/ Dane Wilson
49erFX (6 races): 7. Paris Henken/ Anna Tobias*; 8. Stephanie Roble/ Maggie Shea

Note: USA did not qualify for Tokyo in the 49er event but is first in line to claim a forfeited spot from other countries.

The final three days will be streamed live online from Geelong, Australia:

February 13, 2020:

February 14, 2020:

February 15, 2020: