TROIA PORTUGAL MATCH CUP
Troia: Tuesday July 24th 2007
The third event in this year’s World Match Racing Tour begins tomorrow with the opening round robin of the Troia Portugal Match Cup. Twelve skippers will meet each of the others once and the top scoring eight helmsmen will progress to the knock out stages of the competition, beginning with the quarter-finals that will begin as soon as the preliminaries are complete.
The list of skippers and crews includes many who have been on duty in Valencia at the America’s Cup as well as the leaders in the World Tour and the top placed skippers in the ISAF world rankings. These may mean little at the end of this regatta – the standards are extremely high and there are bound to be changes.
Gavin Brady (NZL) for instance, the helmsman of BMW Oracle Racing, is officially ranked 102nd in the world, a position that is certain to alter by next Monday. Brady has brought with him four of his America’s Cup team-mates, Sean Clarkson, Morgan Trubovich, Eric Doyle and Ed Smyth, and will be a hard act to beat.
The three leaders in the World Tour, Mathieu Richard (FRA) Paolo Cian (ITA) and Ian Williams (GBR) will provide the bulk of the opposition. All of them have shown winning potential this season, along with Philippe Presti (FRA) who did duty as back-up helmsman to Luna Rossa’s James Spithill.
Sebastien Col (FRA) was helmsman of the French America’s Cup challenger, Areva, while Bjorn Hansen (SWE) is the last event winner on the World Tour, taking the Match Cup Sweden in Marstrand. Hansen, it was reported, displayed an outright mastery of the conditions, which were extreme by any standard, reaching near gale force winds.
Alvaro Marinho (POR) is the local skipper while Finland’s Staffan Lindberg is fresh from the Star World Championships at nearby Cascais. Eugeny Neugodnikov (RUS) finished sixth in this year’s Congressional Cup.
The evergreen match racer, Peter Gilmour and his Pizza-La Sailing Team, can always be relied on for a podium finish, and one must never underrate the one woman skipper, Sally Barkow, who finished second in the women’s event that finished here yesterday.
ENDS
