It was left to the girls, Josie Gibson and Saskia Clarke (Norwich) to return the best RYA/Team GBR overall result at the 470 European Championship which finished yesterday (19 July) with three very different and frustrating races in a dropping breeze on Dublin Bay.

Gibson and Clarke finished 10th overall which will stand then in good stead as they seek to rise from Sport England backed lottery funding on the World Class Potential programme to UK Sports Lottery funding on the World Class Performance programme. However, there was a disappointing finish to the regatta for RYA/Team GBR’s Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield who posted a mediocre 10-22-15 dropping to 14th overall. ” It was a very difficult day with the breeze dropping and flicking all over the place in the last race, and overall we’re pretty gutted. It’s been hard because racing has been so broken up by the weather, and on the water it seems like conventional logic has just not held true. Usually you go somewhere and get your head into what is going on on the race course, what works and what doesn’t but here we just did not seem to get into it.” Confessed Rogers (Lymington).

RYA/Team GBR’s Graham Vials and Dan Newman looked to be having a fair final day and were just three points shy of a good top seven overall finish after a 15th and a good fourth place in the second race of the day, but they went on to a 26th in the final race. “We’re reasonably happy with that. Overall it’s been pretty good other than starting with a shocker and finishing with a bad one too.” Commented Vials.

“Both the top guys results could, and probably should have been better, but it has been a extremely hard week and really very fractured. It’s been long and hard and some of the guys have found it really hard to get into it.” Concluded RYA/Team GBR 470 coach Adam Bower.

The men of the RYA/Team GBR 470 squad now head to Athens for 10 days of training and a regatta there, honing their light wind skills for the world championship which take place in Slovenia later this summer.

Overall Results

Women

1st S. Bekatorou/ A Tsoulfa (GRE) 13.0pts

2nd B Armstrong/j Stowell (AUS) 23.0pts

3rd N Via Dufresne/ S Azon 30.0pts

4th B Vered/ N Kornitzki (ISR) 37.0pts

5th S Rothweile/M Leu (GER) 39.0pts

Selected RYA/Team GBR

10th J Gibson/S Clarke 85.0pts

21st C Bassadone/J Heeley 133.0pts

Men/mixed: Gold fleet

1st B Eugeniy/I Igor (UKR) 51.0 pts

2nd G Kiger/ U Gal (ISR) 53.0 pts

3rd G Zandona/A Trani (ITA0 56.0 pts

4th Marinho/Nunes (ESP) 57.0

5th J Martin/M Molund (SWE) 67.0pts

Selected RYA/Team GBR

12th G Vials/D Newman 94.0pts

14th N Rogers/D Newman 100.0pts

Silver fleet

1st Manuel/Paz (ESP) 12.0pts

2nd M Plummer/O Hawkley 32.0pts

3rd B Bonnaund/R Bonnaund (FRA)