WAIS Sailors Complete Worlds Campaign
WAIS athletes competing at the 49er/FX World Championships in Argentina have finished their campaigns with Caitlin Elks and her skipper Tess Lloyd finishing 14th and David Gilmour and his crew Rhys Mara closing in 24th.
Heading into the last day of competition, crews were chasing strong results in an effort to force their way into the top 10 and medal round.
Lloyd and Elks had an encouraging seventh place finish in their final race, but an earlier 20th place finish which followed an opening race effort in 14th, meant they stayed put in 14thposition overall, which was the same ranking they held, heading into the final day of competition.
Skipper Tess Lloyd was philosophical about their result, admitting they’d hoped to race in the medal round, but saw positives in their overall campaign.
“We went into the day in 14th and finished in 14th. We would have liked to get into the top ten Medal Race, but there was one good race where we were doing well and we had some equipment failure and in another we missed one of the shifts. But overall today I think we actually sailed quite well, especially with our upwinds playing the right hand side of the course,” Lloyd said.
“The regatta was a lot lighter than we expected and like so many others we got quite sick at the start after swallowing some of the water and lost a lot of weight, but ironically in the end that was actually ok as it was such a light regatta.”
“Once again the regatta highlighted some areas for us we need to work on when we get home for our summer in Australia. And we’ll be ready for the next Worlds in February.”
Gilmour and Mara were left with too much work to do to threaten the medal round, but did post a 13th position finish in their final race, to show they could mix it with the front end of the fleet.
The pair can now concentrate on February’s World Championships in Florida where conditions should provide more assistance to their combination.