GAZI – Yesterday, July 8th, second day of competition at the 5th World University Match Racing Championship, the day started with a meeting between the Organizing Committee and CISCA, chaired by Claude-Louis Gallien, to discuss main organizational points for the day. The Organizing Committee was represented by Theodoros Katsaounis, Giorgios Vitsakis and Marina Manoura.
This meeting was followed by the distribution of the results of the first day and each team had the opportunity to discuss the penalties with the umpires. In fact, this is the only discipline in sailing where participants are allowed to discuss with umpires about their penalty, the reason why they received a penalty. This is a very nice procedure, helping the competitors to make progresses. This is a real pedagogical procedure in this sport.
The teams had to wait for the wind until 10am and the first teams could start to compete, as 12 (flight) matches were scheduled so all teams could have got the opportunity to compete against each other. At the end of the day, 8 flights were sailed and today, still 4 have to be sailed.
Roland Gaillot, FISU Technical Chair for Match RacingDiscussing with the FISU Technical Chair, Mr. Roland Galliot about the running of this event, he explained that “before the repechage , we will get an idea of whom will be in the quarter finals.”
Roland Galliot said that on July 9th, according to the results, from the places 1 to 6, we will know that those teams will make the quarter-finals and from places 7 to 10, those teams will go for repechage.
And “the matches of round robin will be taken into consideration for the repechage” said Galliot.
Today then, we had intense competitions but not really stressful for the participants, as they could rest in between 2 matches.
Because the boats are not really of the same quality, the FISU CTI and the Organizing Committee have decided to pair the boats 2 by 2, which resulted in some changes of the schedule and sometimes a waste of time for the competitors. However, this allows them to compete under the same conditions so no team has an advantage over another.
According to the results of yesterday, Andrew Shaw (GBR) has the best score, which is not astonishing, as he is the best in the world ranking.
Sandro Cavallari (ITA) together with Lucinda Whitty (AUS) are secondly placed for the moment. At the same level appears James Goss (GBR), who was not well ranked by ISAF at the same place as Lin Christopher (SIN), followed by Marty O’Leary (IRE) and Martin Boidin (DEN).
(Source: Nicole Mangelschots, FISU Asst. WUC)
RESULTS DAY 2