Success for Youth Sailing

The tricky conditions in Hobart weren’t enough to stop our WAIS sailors from securing the win over a very tough push from their opponents.

WAIS sailors Mark Spearman, Carrie Smith, Ella Clark, Lachy Gilmour and Thomas Blaauw, all won their races to reserve their place on the team, for the Youth World Championships in Cyprus in July 2013. This is the first time WAIS has qualified five members onto the Australian Youth Sailing team.

Reigning Laser Radial champion Mark Spearman had a perfect day on the water with three wins from three starts. His performances secured him the title enabling him to defend his ISAF Youth Sailing World Championship gold medal from 2012.

“Today was a really good day for me and I managed to win all three races but all were really close, tough, wins,” said Spearman. “I’ve now got the challenge of defending my Youth Worlds title; it’s always much harder to win the second time around.”

Gilmour and Blaauw qualified for their first Australian Sailing Youth Team after their win in the 420 class.

After a black flag in their first race, the pair had to work their way up the leader board. The secured the title on the final day with three wins from three starts.

“It wasn’t the best of starts but we came back together and managed to get over the line and get the win in the end,” said Blaauw. “We’ve been training for this for the last two years, it’s been on our mind at every training session and something that we really wanted.”

Smith and Clark won the 420 class which qualifies them through to compete in their third straight Youth Worlds. The pair won silver in Ireland in 2012 and look to go one better in Cyprus this year.

“Last year we did two times better than the year before so hopefully we can do it again and move up,” said Smith.

WA finished with 6 in the top 10 in the 420 class, and won both the Laser Radial and Laser 4.7 class.

Homepage Photograph:Dane Lojek