Japan, New Zealand and Argentina Leading at the 470 Spring Cup

The penultimate day of the 2011 470 Spring Cup in France on Sunday 17 April saw a rollercoaster of position changes – which unshuffled the Japanese domination of the three podium places they had secured on the previous day of racing.

With three races held for both the Gold and Silver fleet, and three different race winners for all the races – the change in leaderboard was significant.

Action from 2011 470 Spring Cup © Icarus

In the gold fleet, the Netherlands' Steven Le Fevre and Steven Krol claimed the win in the opening race 6, followed by an eighth and a DNF. It was sufficient to push them up to sixteenth overall up from 19 – but a long way off the leaders. The race win in race 7 went to Australia's Sam Kivell and Will Ryan, which they followed through with their worst result of the series, a 23 in race 8 – but their win still leapfrogged them into ninth overall.

The race win which really made the difference and secured them the a third place was delivered by Lucas Calabrese and Juan de la Fuente of Argentina. They went into the penultimate day of racing just 1 point adrift of Ai Kondo and Wakako Tabata of Japan who were in third overall. Their race win combined with Japan's worst race day of the series shifted everyone's fortunes.

Series leaders on the opening day, Paul Snow-Hansen and Jason Saunders from New Zealand went into today in sixth overall and with a fairly major challenge on their hands – and knowing that their aim for a podium place with two more days' of racing to go would be fiercely protected by some of the world's best sailors. Their day's results of 2, 5 and 16 put them on equal points with the Argentineans in third - so all to play for tomorrow.

The points at the top were incredibly close and alongside their Japanese teammates, who ultimately fell out of the top three, the overall winners Tetsuya Matsunaga and Kimihiko Imamura from Japan didn't have their best day of racing – but it was sufficient to see them stay at the top of the leaderboard. With an ISAF World Ranking of #28 – they have really been on form this year and came to the Spring Cup fresh from a fourth place at the Princess Sofia Trophy.

Holding firm as the top placed women's team are Ai Kondo and Wakako Tabata from Japan in eighth overall after a disappointing day. Second women's team are Jo Aleh and Bianca Barbarich-Bacher in eleventh overall, and third are Virginia Kravarioti and Olga Tsigaridi from Greece who finished #21.

Still all to play for on Monday's final day of racing.

Top 10 Overall after 8 Races

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Top Image: Japan, New Zealand and Argentina battling for the top of the leaderboard © Icarus