ABU DHABI // Mathew Belcher and William Ryan, the gold medallist at the London Olympics, consolidated their position at the top of the 470 men’s class in the second day of the ISAF Sailing World Cup.
The Australians produced another excellent showing on the water to post a third and a bullet to give them a one-point lead over Japan’s Tetsuya Matsunaga and Yugo Yoshida on Friday at the Breakwater on the Corniche.
“Everyone is well aware that the medal race will decide it. We will take each race as it comes. There are only six races so we’re just sailing as well as we can and take as much out of it as we can,” said Belcher, who has won five consecutive world championship titles, an Olympic gold at London 2012 and amassed 17 consecutive regatta victories.
“It’s an amazing place to race. It’s not every day you can race in 12 knots and be wearing Lycra, which is pretty cool. We came over here because we wanted a top-level competition. We’ve got six of the top seven in the world and we’ve certainly got that.
“The weather conditions are fantastic and the racing doesn’t get much better than this. It’s fantastic, we’re really happy to be here and we’re looking forward to seeing how this event develops in the next few years.”
The women’s equivalent has become a wide open race with two boats tied at the top, the 2014 world and European champions, Lara Vadlau and Jolanta Ogar of Austria, and China’s Shasha Chen and Haiyan Gao.
“It’s nice racing between the Chinese, they are really good sailors,” Vadlau said yesterday. “It will be quite a nice battle between us but tomorrow we will just sail our race, do our best and then we will see.”
Billy Besson and Marie Riou remained on top of the leader board in the Nacra 17 but France’s dominance of the podium places was ended.
Thomas Zajac and Tanja Frank of Austria and Swiss pair Matias Buhler and Nathalie Brugger won a race each to break in to the top three positions.
“It was really difficult for us,” said Zajac, “In fact much more difficult than yesterday as the wind was going up and down with big wind holes in the fleet. You needed a bit of luck to have a nice consistent day.”
Racing continues Saturday starting at noon.
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