British sailors set for European title challenges
Written by RYA | 07 May 2017
RS:X, 470 and Finn European Championships set to start off Mediterranean coast
Some 23 British Sailing Team athletes will aim to tame Mediterranean winds and waters this week (8-13 May) as they bid for European Championship honours across five Olympic classes.
The French port city of Marseilles will host the RS:X Men’s and Women’s Windsurfing Europeans as well as the Championship for the men’s heavyweight Finn class, while the principality of Monaco will see European Championship battles unfold in the 470 Women’s and Men’s events over the same six days.
The World Cup Sailing event in Hyeres provided a timely warm up for all five classes, with British athletes finishing just outside the podium spots in three of them (RS:X Women, Finn and 470 Women) last week.
Izzy Hamilton, who finished fourth in the RS:X women’s windsurfing event in Hyeres, is one of three British women competing at the Europeans, alongside Emma Wilson and Imogen Sills, while Tom Squires is one of six British Sailing Team talents in the men’s fleet.
Ed Wright and Ben Cornish will both be aiming for podium finishes at the Finn Europeans, with Wright having finished fourth in Hyeres and Cornish wanting to build on a season-opening World Cup silver in Miami. Teammates Pete McCoy and Henry Wetherell will also line up in the 68-boat fleet.
At the 470 Europeans in Monte Carlo, Amy Seabright-Anna Carpenter will look to bounce back from a tough end to an otherwise positive week at the Hyeres World Cup where they slipped to fourth in the medal race. Fellow British Sailing Team athletes Jess Lavery-Flora Stewart and Sarah Norbury, sailing with Eilidh McIntyre, will join them on the women’s startline, with Martin Wrigley-James Taylor and Harvey Martin-James Bishop flying the flag in the Men’s division.
All five events are Open – permitting entries from non-European nations – with the Finn and RS:X events using experimental race formats.
The windsurfers will sail a 12-race opening series, after which the top 12 will advance to a quarter-final. The top six sailors from that will race a semi-final, with the top three semi-final finishers, each then assured of a medal, fighting it out for the order of the podium spots.
In the Finn event, the top three boats at the end of a 10-race opening series will fast-track to the final, with the next seven boats in the standings sailing a semi-final from which the top two progress to a winner-takes-all five-boat final.
The 470 event will contest an 11-race opening series with the top ten boats progressing to a double-points medal race.
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