Among the Australian 470 teams in Sanremo, Italy, Mat Belcher, Will Ryan, Nia Jerwood and Monique de Vries handled the extreme conditions best on day four (May 12) of the 470 Europeans.

The experience of multiple world champions and Rio silver medallists Belcher/Ryan was put to good use in the big breeze, bullets up to 30 knots and a first race finish in 4 knots and still the combination managed to trounce the top fleet.

For the women’s pair, “training with the Aussie men’s teams in the breeze and clocking plenty of hours out in the Freo doctor prepared us well for this event,” said a buzzing Jerwood overnight after the pair cracked the top ten with a 1, 5 day.

The men's Gold and Silver fleets and the women had their first race of the day late morning in some 15 knots that kept increasing tO exceed 25 knots. Given the extreme conditions, the race committee sent crews back to the marina which is when Australian Sailing’s high performance director Iain Murray caught up with Belcher and Ryan.

“It was really insane, there are a lot of mountains close by and it was gusting up to 30 knots at times, and shifty,” Belcher said. “It was a pretty hairy race; we were really pinned down and just trying to get around the course ourselves, rather than paying attention to the others.”

Their coach Victor Kovalenko shared his thoughts on the men’s pair’s dominant opening result: “Mathew and William were precise in their observations. We cannot control conditions but we can control other factors like emotions, tactics, strategy and speed.”

Race two began late afternoon in 15 knots which then doubled to 30 knots, causing mayhem.

Like the breeze, Belcher and Ryan moved up and down the ladder in terms of their place in the tough fleet but staged a good comeback to finish seventh, Ryan saying afterwards: “It was the kind of race anything could happen. We had a good start and first beat then missed a couple of shifts coming to the top mark and dropped back in the pack. We kept fighting hard and waiting for our turn; I think we did a really good job just to be patient. A lot of people capsized and had damage - we did well to come out of today. There’s plenty to play for still.”

Chris Charlwood and Josh Dawson weren’t able to convert in the fluky conditions, scoring a 29^th and 25^th.

Perth’s Nia Jerwood was upbeat after their day four outing, the skipper saying: “Monique and I had a great day on the water. We scored a first and a fifth which puts us in ninth overall. Tomorrow is the last day before medal race, hopefully we can get three races in. Our plan is to keep it simple and just keep doing what we are doing.”

The video highlights from day four are available here.

Monday, May 13, is the penultimate day of the championship and the first start is scheduled for 1200hrs with weather conditions hard to predict, according to the organisers.

Website:  http://2019europeans.470.org/

470 Men’s (70 boats) 
1st Mat Belcher and Will Ryan 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, (7) = 6 points
31st Chris Charlwood and Josh Dawson 11, 18, 11, 17, (29), 25 = 82 points

470 Women’s (40 boats) 
9th Nia Jerwood and Monique de Vries, 16, 18, 3, 20, 1, 5 = 43 points

Picture courtesy of Gerolamo Acquarone.