The Miami weather saved the best for last on a special Medal Race Saturday edition of the 2014 ISAF Sailing World Cup Miami. Medals were decided in 10 Olympic events on Biscayne Bay under sunny skies and enough wind for good racing.

This year’s regatta offered a little bit of everything, including success from former champions, major upsets, and a glimpse into the future of Olympic level one-design sailing.

Uncooperative wind this week limited the number of series races for most of the events. This created even more significance for the medal round race(s), as many sailors and their crews were in contention Saturday. The Medal Race series included the top ten ranked sailors in each fleet competing in one race with double points applied. The 49er and 49erFX conduct a series of three short races worth single points each.

470 Men
The story of the day, quite possibly came from the Men’s 470 event.

The defending champions Stu McNay and Dave Hughes (USA) had a slight lead over Sofian Bouvet and Jeremie Mion (FRA) by one point at the start of the day in the Men’s 470 event. The regatta favorites World #1 Mat Belcher and Will Ryan (AUS) were 14 points back of the leaders.

Saturday belonged to the French team Bouvet and Mion who notched their first ISAF World Cup victory. A fourth place finish was good enough to secure the gold medal, as fleet leaders McNay and Hughes dropped back to ninth in the medal race.

Meanwhile, Belcher and Ryan placed second, which moved them up for a silver medal. McNay and Hughes earned bronze medal honors.

The second place finish for Belcher snaps his 18 regatta win streak, and 10th with Ryan.

Belcher had this to say about this week’s experience and the end of their win streak. “Getting in six races as opposed to 10 was challenging, but the French had a great regatta, and so did the Americans. The fleet quality here is phenomenal. We’ve got most of the top 15 in the world here.”

“The conditions were difficult. The boat speed difference between competitors was almost nothing and it was very flat water and tricky conditions. We made the decisions we made the guys we raced made them better.”

“It was essential to be here. We’ve learned a lot about our competitors and how they race in these conditions. It certainly motivated the fleet to try and turn those results, but for us it’s all about Rio. And these conditions will be similar to Rio.”

Bouvet commented on his team’s tremendous win. “We are very happy because it was the objective to win the regatta and be better than Mat and Will. We try to do our best in every important regatta. Here was very important for us because it’s the start of 2014 and we wanted to let everybody know how good we are.”

“It was light winds in Miami this week so it was not easy. The conditions were very shifty. We had good speed in the upwind and downwind and because of that it put us at the front.”

“We tried to find space on the race course to find good speed because it was so difficult to get good speed in the light breeze. It was a difficult regatta because we waited a very long time for the wind sometimes and we needed to concentrate all the time.”

“We have a good system and are happy with where we are heading to Rio, and we’ve seen that with the results we got over the past couple of years.”

Winning today’s Medal Race was Panagiotis Mantis and Pavlos Kagialis (GRE). The Greek team finished eight points ahead of Belcher and Ryan, and 12 points ahead of World #3 Sime Fantela and Igor Marenic (CRO)

470 Women
World #3 Sophie Weguelin and Eilidh McIntyre (GBR) continued their triumphant ways on Saturday by coming from behind to win the Medal Race and seal the gold medal in the small but talented Women’s 470 event.

They won six of seven races this week to win by a 12 point margin over former 470 World Championship silver medalists Camille Lecointre and Hélène Defrance (FRA). Lecointre and Defrance placed third today to earn silver. Lara Vadlau and Jolanta Ogar (AUT) took the bronze.

The Britons made a late surge on the final downwind for the decisive win after a slow start to begin the race. They started the day with an eight point advantage.

McIntyre was ecstatic about the team’s performance this week. “We had an awful start and had to battle our way through. The people we didn’t want to be winning were winning, so it was a pretty full-on race. But we pulled through and managed to win it, so it’s all good.”

“It’s just nice to know that we’ve got good pace, which is always helpful, and it’s nice to know that we’re able to handle ourselves in tight situations.”

“The light wind isn’t usually something we tend to favour, but it’s not been a struggle this week. We’ve done a lot of training before the regatta and we felt pretty confident going in.”

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Image: 470 Men Medallists © Walter Cooper

Source: ISAF