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20 Dec 2009

Sail Melbourne Concludes

Image: © sportthelibrary/Jeff Crowe

Winners Decided at Medal Race and History Made For Belcher and Page

The Sail Melbourne medal races have been run and won with the crews greeted with great sailing conditions for the final day of racing.

After the unpredictable weather of the last few days Melbourne turned it on for the medal races with a south-easterly wind between 12 and 15 knots for the majority of the day.

Mathew Belcher and Malcolm Page finished the regatta as they started it, with a win over Americans Stuart McNay and Graham Biehl. Belcher and Page went through Sail Melbourne undefeated, the first time either of them had done that in the 470 class – an outstanding straight run of eight race wins.

“We had a good medal race, we went consistent on the start and it paid off,” said Belcher. “Our goal was to stay close to the Americans and we got some good speed on the first leg and found ourselves in the lead.”

“Once we got there we said to ourselves that it was up to them to try and do something special to knock us off,” he said.

McNay and Biehl were happy with their performance, staying in touch with the Australians for the entire regatta.

“Mat and Mal sailed an excellent regatta, they were very quick upwind all week and incredibly hard to get around,” said McNay. “The medal race was quite good for us, the start line was short which was a challenge but our second place was a good way to cap off a great week of sailing.”

Belcher and Page finished the regatta on eight points, ten ahead of McNay and Biehl with Sam Kivell and Will Ryan third.

In the 470 women’s fleet New Zealand crew Jo Aleh and Olivia Powrie took the overall victory with their win in the medal race giving them a six point buffer over Australians Stacey Omay and Chelsea Hall with Singaporeans Dawn Liu and Siobhan Tam third.

“We were a bit shaky at the start and got jammed up with a few boats but we came back pretty well,” said Aleh. “We managed to get into the lead by the top mark and from then on kept the others in check.”

“We had a good range of conditions all week, though we really enjoyed it when there was plenty of wind out there,” she said.

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