| TROIA PORTUGAL MATCH CUP PREVIEW |
| Tuesday, 24 July 2007 |
TROIA, Portugal
The third event in this year’s World Match Racing Tour begins tomorrow with
the opening round robin of the Troia Portugal Match Cup. Twelve skippers
will meet each of the others once and the top scoring eight helmsmen will
progress to the knock out stages of the competition, beginning with the
quarter-finals that will begin as soon as the preliminaries are complete.
The list of skippers and crews includes many who have been on duty in
Valencia at the America’s Cup as well as the leaders in the World Tour and
the top placed skippers in the ISAF world rankings. These may mean little
at the end of this regatta – the standards are extremely high and there are
bound to be changes.
Gavin Brady (NZL) for instance, the helmsman of BMW Oracle Racing, is
officially ranked 102nd in the world, a position that is certain to alter by
next Monday. Brady has brought with him four of his America’s Cup
team-mates, Sean Clarkson, Morgan Trubovich, Eric Doyle and Ed Smyth, and
will be a hard act to beat.
The three leaders in the World Tour, Mathieu Richard (FRA) Paolo Cian (ITA)
and Ian Williams (GBR) will provide the bulk of the opposition. All of them
have shown winning potential this season, along with Philippe Presti (FRA)
who did duty as back-up helmsman to Luna Rossa’s James Spithill.
Sebastien Col (FRA) was helmsman of the French America’s Cup challenger,
Areva, while Bjorn Hansen (SWE) is the last event winner on the World Tour,
taking the Match Cup Sweden in Marstrand. Hansen, it was reported,
displayed an outright mastery of the conditions, which were extreme by any
standard, reaching near gale force winds.
Alvaro Marinho (POR) is the local skipper while Finland’s Staffan Lindberg
is fresh from the Star World Championships at nearby Cascais. Eugeny
Neugodnikov (RUS) finished sixth in this year’s Congressional Cup.
The evergreen match racer, Peter Gilmour and his PST Sailing Team, can
always be relied on for a podium finish, and one must never underrate the
one woman skipper, Sally Barkow, who finished second in the women’s event
that finished here yesterday.
|
|
Email this page to a friend
|
