Bronze Medal At Kiel Week

June 24, 2010
Kiel, Germany

Team Tunnicliffe came away from Kiel Week with a Bronze medal. It was a hard fought battle in tough conditions, and despite being initially disappointed, we are happy with our overall result.

Lining Up For Their Award

Photo: (c) Fried Elliott, June 2010

We entered the last day of racing 2-1 in the quarter finals against Australia's Katie Spithill. After losing the first race of the day to tie up the series 2-2, we took control of the last race, and went on to advance to the semi finals against Russia's Ekatarina Skudina. We won the first two races of the semi's in close battles. The third race was a race where the shifts were so big that you had to tack on them no matter what you wanted to do on the race course. We ended up following her around the course, shift for shift and she won that race.

In the fourth race of the series, she led off the line, we caught up to her downwind and rounded the leeward mark right on her stern. Up the second beat, we got a bit excited and tacked at her too early, giving her the right side of the course and the next big shift. From that point, she regained her lead and went on to win the race. In the final race of the series, we had an even start. We led around the top mark and held her off at the bottom mark. Up the second beat, we extended our lead until right at the top where we gave her a bit too much leverage into the next puff, and she caught up to within one boat length. On the final leg to the finish, we battled hard with her, and in the last 4 boat lengths of the race, we were in a gybing dual, and she managed to position herself just well enough to slow us and we crossed the line at the same time. We both had to look at the finish boat to see who won the race. Unfortunately for us, they had up the color of the other boat meaning we would go to the petit-finals and race for Bronze. When asking the race committee after the race how close it was at the finish, he told me that it was 5-6 inches between us. It was heartbreaking, but made us hungry in the petit-finals.

In the petit-finals, we raced our fellow USSTAG teammates, Genny Tulloch and team in a first-to-two points series. The first race, we led from start to finish after being able to pin her to the port layline off the line. The second race was a bit more exciting in the pre-start. Just as the gun went, Genny got a penalty and we were able again to control her up the first beat, and we went on to win the race and the Bronze medal. You can see the final results at the event website. We would like to thank, for their help this week, Dave Dellenbaugh, our coach, Scott Weis, the team PET, and Fried Elliott, the photographer and our ride to the airport.

We were very disappointed by our 6 inch loss, but we grew as a team from it. It was a great mental test for us to see if we could bounce back from it, and we proved to ourselves that we could. Overall, we had a tough week of sailing, winning some great races, and losing some too. We took a lot of notes on our mistakes and made notes on specific parts of the race that we want to work on. We are taking a four week break before we meet up again for practice at the end of July and then hopefully off to Weymouth for the final ISAF Sailing World Cup event.

Because of our 3rd place finish here, we moved back up in the ISAF World Cup Standings and are currently lying 2nd overall. With the points close between the top teams, it will be a good battle in Weymouth to see who will win this year's World Cup.

I will am heading to Scotland today to start getting ready for the Laser Radial Women's World Championships. Having qualified for it earlier in the year at the North American Championships, I figured I would give it one last go this quad. I am looking forward to sailing the boat again and seeing all of my friends from the class. I will be training hard in the next two weeks to prepare for it (and try to remember how to sail the boat). The rest of the team is headed back home.

We would like to thank Carmeuse and Trinity Yachts for their continued support of our campaign for the 2012 Olympics in London. We would also like to thank US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics (USSTAG) and its sponsors for their support.

Sail Hard,

Anna
Team Tunnicliffe