2003 LASER RADIAL YOUTH WORLD & EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIPS

Fraglia della Vela di Riva, Riva del Garda, Italy, 4 - 9 August

Competition hots up at the top

The first day of the finals at the Laser Radial Youth World Championship saw the true "Ora" wind for which Lake Garda is internationally famous. For 4 days the standard phrase from the locals has been: "it's not normally like this". Today was different. The 14 knot wind was in place by 1230hrs, enabling the 2 finals races scheduled for today in four fleets to be completed.

The 72 best of 284 sailors are now racing in the gold fleet. Although counting for the same points as a qualifier race, the gold fleet is a lot more difficult to win and not surprisingly some of the early leaders are finding the going tough.

Out in front Tonko Kumanic from Croatia had his worst result so far, a nineteenth, in his first race of the day, which was won by Vitaly Rozhkov from Russia ahead of Daniel Mihelic from Croatia. The second race was even more exciting. Blair McLay from New Zealand had a good a lead at the first mark. By the end of the first downwind Krystal Weir from Australia was flying the flag for the girls in second place. At the end of the second windward leg Weir had dropped to fourth with McLay still with a comfortable lead. Behind him Kuzmanic was moving through the minor places and by the end of the second downwind leg he was in a position to challenge Mclay. The New Zealander held off the Croatian until the final short leg to windward when the Croatian split tacks and went ahead on the last crossing before the finish. Weir was initially happy with her fourth place saying: "it was great to know I had the same speed as the boys, especially as I got the first race hopelessly wrong". Her glory was short lived when she returned ashore to find that she was scored OCS for a premature start. British sailor Keir Clarke, who was lying second overall, used up his second discard when he had to retire after receiving his second jury penalty for sculling on the start line, which drops him to 19th overall.