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| DOUBLE NO. 1 |
| Thursday, 05 August 2004 |
Yeah, baby! Ed Baird is stoked after winning Stage 1 of the Swedish Match Tour, the Portugal Match Cup. (Guido Cantini/Sea&See)
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By Sean McNeill
After completing one of his most successful months ever, Ed Baird currently holds a unique double in the world of match-racing. He’s ranked No. 1 on the Swedish Match Tour leaderboard and No. 1 in the world.
Baird, the skipper of Team Musto from St. Petersburg, Fla., achieved this rare feat by winning Stage 1 of the 2004-’05 Swedish Match Tour, the Portugal Match Cup, with a 3-0 victory over Russell Coutts of New Zealand.
The victory came one week after Baird and core crewmembers Andy Horton and Jon Ziskind won the match-racing world championship in Russia. For Baird, it was his third match-racing world title and second consecutive with Horton and Ziskind, who also won last year on Lake Garda, Italy. They were joined in Russia by bowman Brad Webb of the BMW Oracle Racing Team.
In early July they placed fifth at the Swedish Match Cup in Marstrand, Sweden, wrapping up seventh overall on the 2003-’04 Tour leaderboard. And last April they won the Congressional Cup off Long Beach, Calif., overcoming a 50-second deficit in light and shifty winds.
In their last two Tour events, Sweden and Portugal, they’ve posted a 24-4 won-lost record (.857 winning percentage). Add in the Worlds and their record is an impressive 41-9 (.820 winning percentage).
“Ed’s been sailing really fast all year,” said headsail trimmer Ziskind after the win in Cascais, Portugal. “He just puts the bow down and lets the boat rumble.”
Considering that match-racing events are typically sailed close to shore to enhance spectator appeal, the conditions are usually fluky. Big windshifts producing wild lead changes are not uncommon.
 Such was the case in the final of the Portugal Match Cup, where Baird and Coutts (left) exchanged the lead as many as eight times in the three-race series.
Such was the case in Novouralsk, Russia, where the worlds were held on Verkh-Neyvinsky Pond. A lake would’ve been more desirable, but a pond was good for them.
“The racing was some of the most difficult I’ve ever experienced,” said Baird. “The conditions were never stable. There was never a single race where, as the leader, you could say your lead was safe. There was always a chance that the guy a half leg behind could go around you. Or you, a half leg behind, could go around somebody. It was amazingly difficult.”
Novouralsk lies in central Russia, near the city of Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg is the capital of Sverdlovsk Oblast (an oblast is the equivalent of an American state), and lies east of the slopes of the Ural Mountains.
In the Cold War, Novouralsk likely would’ve been at ground zero. Infamous for being a closed city, it’s where Russia conducted many of its nuclear weapons development programs.
“This region of Russia has been restricted to foreigners and citizens of Russia for many decades. Only recently has it been made available to travel,” said Baird. “For instance, you’re still not allowed to go into the city. It’s guarded and gated and walled.”
Baird said that the citizens of Novouralsk were quite friendly, once they got to know you. “In the morning, walking up to each other in the hall or down the dock, nobody would say good morning. It was a strange twist to what we’re used to,” he said. “But if you engaged them then they would start smiling and talking.”
The wind conditions proved harder to tame than the local populace. Baird said that on average the wind blew from an easterly direction and mostly in the 5- to 10-knot range.
“A typical race would have a minimum 30-degree shift and a maximum of 90 degrees,” Baird said. “There were times where we would start with jibs out reaching toward the windward mark in very light wind. Then we would tack many times and eventually end up on the opposite tack but the same angle that we started on.”
 Baird said the boats, modified Ricochet 747s, remind him of the ones used last year on Lake Garda. “They were 24 feet long and were a redesigned cruiser/racer hull. They were cut down a little bit and the deck was replaced with an open cockpit,” Baird said.
The Worlds format calls for a double round robin followed by semifinals and final. But only the double round robin was completed. Due to a lack of wind on the final day the latter rounds weren’t sailed. So Baird and crew won on the basis of winning the Round Robin with a 17-5 record.
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Newsletter - September 2008
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