After a day one washout of the 470 World Championship and Tokyo 2020 Olympic qualification series at Enoshima in Japan due to light winds, racing commenced Monday August 5 for Australia’s three competing teams. 

Light, shifty breeze and a significant wave swell on the racetrack made sure there was no margin for errors for the 91 teams. Two races into a long week and the men’s pairing of Mat Belcher and Will Ryan and the women’s pairing of Nia Jerwood and Monique de Vries posted solid opening results. 

Victor Kovalenko is with Belcher/Ryan, the most famous partnership in the championship and lining up as the #1 world ranked team, as coach. At the close of day two he reported: “The boys had two tough races with light winds, a lot of temptations and traps in big shifts and challenging currents, but in both races they had good starts and finished fourth. 

“We will continue our qualification racing tomorrow in a very strong yellow fleet, which we can definitely call gold fleet based on quality.”

Belcher and Ryan qualified Australia to Tokyo 2020 last year, and by all accounts it is a done deal that they will represent their nation in Japan. So this time around the pair will focus on asserting their authority on the same race track that will be used for the Olympics in just one year's time, and regaining the world title they lost to Kevin Peponnet/Jeremie Mion of France last year. A win at Enoshima would make it Belcher's eighth and the fifth for Ryan.

The 52 boat 470 men’s teams are split into two fleets for the five race qualification series, before advancing to gold and silver for the six-race final series, and onto the top 10 for the medal race podium decider on Friday 10 August. The 39 boat women's fleet will race a single series of 11 races ahead of the medal race.

The 470 Men’s fleet has been re-seeded for tomorrow so will face a race line-up of different teams based on their leader board positions from day two.

Women

Western Australia’s Jerwood/de Vries opened their regatta promisingly. “We came 7th and 12th making today a nice confidence boost for our team,” Jerwood said overnight. “We have been working hard on improving our speed and boat handling in light air, and we really saw a difference in our performance on the water.”

Battling it out for one of the six women’s Olympic qualification places on offer at the 2019 470 Worlds are teams from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, Thailand and the USA.

Racing resumes on Tuesday 6 August at 1200 hours with three races scheduled for the men and women fleets. From race 3 the series discard comes into play.

Website: http://2019worlds.470.org/en/default/races/race 

Live tracking 

Results 

Australian Sailing Team Results

Men (52 boats)
5th Mat Belcher & Will Ryan 4, 4 = 8 points
48th Chris Charlwood & Josh Dawson 20, 20 = 40 points

Women (39 boats)
7th Nia Jerwood & Monique de Vries 7, 12 = 19 points
 

Photo Credit: Bulkhead Photography

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