After four days of disrupted racing, competitors at the Delta Lloyd 470 World Championships finally saw co-operative conditions in The Hague on Friday (16 July), with British sailors in strong contention as the world title challenge heats up.
The regatta has been hampered both by too much wind and by too little, but on Friday’s first day of gold fleet racing both the men’s and women’s fleets managed three races apiece, with Skandia Team GBR’s Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell revelling in the improved conditions.
The 23-year-old Patience and Bithell, also 23, advanced into second place overall thanks to a race win, a fifth and a fourth for their efforts in the 17-22 knot winds at the North Sea venue.
“It’s been a really good day for us,” said Helensburgh’s Patience.
“Conditions were favourable to our style – we had wind and waves and it was cold. The foreign teams hate that, we love it – especially me being brought up in Scotland!”
“We hit our targets today, we were going fast and we got in the groove very early on in the day, and from then that mindset and momentum just carried on through so we’re really happy.”
Patience and his Rochdale-born crew Bithell made waves at the 2009 Worlds when, after just five days of sailing together, they clinched an unexpected silver medal.
But in spite of their strong position heading into the final two days of the World Championships, Patience is playing down their chance of a repeat podium performance.
“Obviously everyone wants a medal – have we come here specifically saying we must come home with a medal? Absolutely not.
“We’ve come here to work on much more specific areas of our sailing. We’re still a new team – me and Stuart have been sailing together for not even a year yet, so we’re looking to work on things which will help us in the bigger picture towards the trials next year.”
Nic Asher and Elliot Willis, in the hunt for a third World Championship win to add to their 2006 and 2008 titles, suffered with a 6,18,9 from their three races today, which dropped them from overall second to sixth.
Sarah Ayton and Saskia Clark saw a solid day in the women’s fleet, advancing to fifth in their first World Championship since joining forces earlier this year.
Ayton, the double Olympic gold medallist, and Clark picked up 3,8,6 from their three races and are pleased with the promise they’ve shown during this first major regatta test.
“We started pretty well today – on all the starts there was a bit of tide doing something but we managed to get that nailed,” Clark explained.
“Starting well puts you in good shape to make that first decision yours – that’s what we’ve been struggling with a little bit this week so that was that an improvement today and hopefully we can continue and get a few more of those in tomorrow,” added Ayton.
“The sea state is the tricky bit,” Ayton said of the breezy racing conditions. “We’ve done a little bit of sailing in this, but today’s probably a good chunk of the sailing we’ve done in these sorts of conditions!”
Clark recalled: “There were a few waves coming at us where I thought ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do!’ and then they just took you off the side!
“There was one pretty bad upwind and one pretty bad one on one of the reaches that took me straight into Sarah’s lap!”
Penny Clark and Katrina Hughes struggled upwind in the third race of the day after losing their jib, but managed to overtake 10 boats on the final downwind leg to salvage a tenth place to add to their 8,4 from the opening two races. They’re poised in ninth place overall.
The Delta Lloyd 470 World Championships continue through until Sunday 18 July.
For full results and further information, visit www.skandiateamgbr.com
