Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championships – Final Results

Gold medals galore

20 July 2006

Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championship 2006, Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy, UK:

The final day of the Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championships brought surprise wins for a few nations, with one race sailed in the early morning, all the teams were back on dry land quickly to celebrate their massive achievements.

For Tom Phipps, the helm of the British Hobie Cat 16 team, and Lukasz Grodzicki the Polish RS:X windsurfer, this is their second successive ISAF Youth World gold medal, with a day to spare.

Phipps and his crew, Richard Glover sailors could not hide their happiness. “It was a massive achievement for us to win last year in Korea, to win in our own country makes this second medal very special.”

The two other medals in the Hobie Cats were still up for grabs today. The Australian pairing of Jason Waterhouse and Jeremy Roberts finished the final race in a disappointing 12th place relegating them to fourth overall. This allowed Brazilians Bruno Viela Frey and Ricieri Vidal to take the silver medal, with Denmark’s Jenna Mai Hansen and Jonathan Bay claiming bronze.

Also claiming his second successive title was today was Lukasz Grodzicki from Poland. He has led the RS:X fleet all week and was a convincing winner. His worst result of the week was a fourth place. He will certainly be looking to return to Weymouth in 2012, this time going for Olympic gold. “Having won this event last year and it was good to come back and win again.  I am really happy and very proud.”

Fabian Heidegger from Italy finished today’s final race in third place on his RS:X board. This was enough to secure himself a silver medal, with Pierre Le Coq (FRA) taking bronze. The battle between these two competitors has been intense all week, even to the point where they both protested each other for a race incident for which they were both subsequently disqualified by the jury.

In the girls RS:X fleet, Laura Linares smiling face said it all as she stepped ashore knowing she had won the gold medal, one the young Italian from Sicily certainly deserved with a near perfect score card. Israel’s Maayan Davidovich did enough to secure the silver medal from Polish sailor Malgorzata Bialecka.

Croatian Laser Radial sailor, Tina Mihelic took Croatia’s first ever gold medal in these championships. In the first press conference Tina said, “This is my last Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds and it is wonderful to go home with a gold medal.”

The Dutch Radial sailor Marit Bouwmeester spent the second half of the week trying to pull herself back up from the lower ranks after a lacklustre start to the event, but thanks to the support of her team-mates and the Dutch team coach, Britain’s Mark Littlejohn, she slowly rose back up the leaderboard. Today the battle for the silver medal was between the Dutch sailor and Danish Maiken Foght Schutt. Bouwmeester finishing in sixth and Foght Schutt back in 23rd in the final race, giving Bouwmeester the silver medal by just one point.

At just fifteen years old, Singapore’s Victoria Chan in the Laser Radial class and is certainly a name to look out for in the future following a win at the Laser 4.7 World Championships in France two weeks ago, and her fourth place here in Weymouth.

The battle between the top two in the full rig Laser class has been waging fiercely this week. Swedish, Emil Cedergard had an early lead but only on count back as the Canadian Luke Ramsey chased hard. Today saw, the ninth race of the championships for the Laser fleet giving them a second race discard which allowed Ramsey to drop his 11th from yesterday, giving the Canadian the title. Cedergard’s 13th in the today race meant he had done just enough to take silver with Russia’s Igor Lisovenka taking bronze.

Ramsey gave out some wise words to future youth sailors, “I have trained really hard all year for this event and throughout the competition has been really close and finally to come out on top is really great.  My friend Jen, who competed at the Volvo ISAF a few years ago and did well, gave me some good advice: just treat it like any other regatta. ”

It looked like it was going to be double gold for Australian in the 420 fleets. Favourites Belinda Kerl and Chelsea Hall secured gold this morning, team-mates Sam Kivell and Max Taylor came ashore thinking they had also won gold from the Argentinean pairing. But after a protest between the Croatian and Argentinean teams, the Croats were disqualified, meaning the both the AUS and CRO were on equal points, and the title going to the Argentinean pair on count back. The bronze medal was snatched by the Brazilians, Marcos Adler and Bruno Leal Faria from the Israelis in fourth.

The Australian 420 girls Kerl and Hall sat in the press conference this afternoon full of smiles, “We were pretty stoked, really, really happy”, then Kerl added, “We are ecstatic as we really did not expect to go so well.  It has been a great opportunity to see how other teams from around the world go.  On the whole a fantastic experience.”

Spanish girls 420 team managed to keep silver despite the fact they were over the line (OCS) today but the surprise of the day was the Singapore pair, Sarah Tana and Tze Ting claimed bronze when the second discard came into play and they dropped their two poor results.

Finally, the Volvo Trophy was awarded to Italy as the best performing nation.  It is the first time Italy has won the Volvo Trophy and in the year, which saw the nation also win the FIFA World Cup!

Italian coach, Filippo Maretti was proud of his young sailors, “It is the first time the team has won the trophy and is very important in encouraging the sailors, coaches and the team leaders. It’s a reward for all our efforts.  We are so happy for all of our sailing team and for the strength it will give sailing in Italy in the future.”

Glenn Bourke, CEO of the Volvo Ocean Race commented today, when hearing the final results of the Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championships, “We at Volvo are very proud to sponsor such a prestigious event. With 63 nations participating, it highlights how sailing brings people together globally. This event’s previous winners include America’s Cup sailors, like Russell Coutts, Double Olympic Gold medallist Ben Ainslie or Volvo Ocean Race winner Stuart Bannatyne. I am sure some of the winners from this years event will go onto became the sailing stars of the future.”