Bryony Shaw, Olympic Champion Paul Goodison and the 49er duo of Paul Brotherton and Mark Asquith made the best of another testing day at the ISAF Sailing World Cup event in Hyeres, France, on Wednesday (28 April 2010).



The Olympic bronze winning windsurfer Shaw, who turned 27 yesterday, extended her lead at the top of the RS:X women’s fleet, Goodison bounced back from a disqualification while Brotherton and Asquith put in solid showing across four races to take over the yellow jerseys in their respective fleets on another day beset with delays. 


Light wind conditions continued to dog the French Olympic Sailing Week, and with many fleets desperately needing races to complete their qualification series’, it made for a long day on the water with the 49er class the last to reach the shore after sunset.Bryony Shaw sailed a mature two races to consolidate her lead in the women’s RS:X fleet.



The Skandia Team GBR star picked up a third and a fifth from her two races, while all her nearest rivals struggled to find form, which allowed her to amass a 13 point lead over Spanish training partner Blanca Manchon after six races. 


Paul Goodison, the Olympic, World and European Champion, was set back to 31st place after four races after a second yellow flag penalty forced him to retire from race four.  He hit right back, however, with a fifth and a race win as soon gold fleet racing got underway to sit him on top of the leaderboard in the 141-boat single-handed fleet.



Paul Brotherton (43), who first competed at the French Olympic Sailing Week 21 years ago, and crew Mark Asquith lead not only the competitive Skandia Team GBR 49er fleet, but also the overall leaderboard after six races.



Their fourth race of the day, held late into the evening, saw their worst result of the regatta so far – a 25th – after they had to re-cross the startline, but their earlier results of 1,4,2 more than kept them in the hunt, with the European silver medal-winning duo now ten points ahead of Danish duo Allan Norregaard and Peter Lang.

“It doesn’t feel good at the moment because we’ve just spent about six hours baking in the sun,” said Brotherton of their performance on Wednesday. “But I’d rather have than sit around all day doing nothing so it was good day for us, and we got some good races in.”



The 49er event is littered with medal winners, both from Skandia Team GBR and internationally, but Brotherton insists that he’s not phased by that even though he and Asquith only reformed their partnership last summer.



”There’s talent all over the place wherever you look if we started to worry too much about that we’d be all over the place,” he replies. “It’s just a matter of thinking where to put our boat at any one time.”

Stevie Morrison-Ben Rhodes and Dave Evans-Ed Powys are just outside of the top ten positions, in 13th and 14th places, while Skandia Team GBR teammates Chris Draper and Peter Greenhalgh withdrew from the regatta so Draper could attend the birth of his first child.



In the Finn class, Ed Wright also rallied back into contention after a disappointing second race yesterday.  He picked up results of 8,1,5 today to boost him into second place overall, while Helena Lucas occupies the same place in the 2.4mR Paralympic class, holding her overnight position as their fleet, along with the Sonars, saw no racing on Wednesday.



Lucy Macgregor, Annie Lush and Ally Martin were also confined to shore today, and will now head straight to the quarter-finals instead of racing their gold group round-robin.Hannah Mills and Claire Cumming broke back into the top ten in the women’s 470 event today, in ninth place overall, while Sarah Ayton and Saskia Clark are in 13th.

Nick Dempsey suffered on the first day of gold fleet racing in the men’s RS:X event – he’s in 11th overall while Charlotte Dobson is 12th in the Laser Radial event and John Gimson and Ed Greig are fifth in the Star event.

For more, visit the RYA website.