Great Britain win the inaugural event for the university match racing sailing championships which took place in Quiberon, France with 10 teams from 7 different countries. The students representing Great Britain were Paul Campbell-James (Southampton), Alex Cherry (Exeter), David Carr (Exeter), Mark Richmond (Exeter) and Nick Hutton (Southampton Institute). A windy week in Europe, with sailing days lost in the ISAF World Sailing Championship, the Tour Voile and at the Farr 40?s. However the students reefed their Beneteau First Class 8s initially with one reef and eventually with two and they were able to complete the full schedule of exciting windward/leeward races.
Teams were seeded initially using the ISAF Match Race Sailing ranking list of June 21 2002 and initially the teams sailed in a Double Round Robin so that each skipper sailed each other skipper twice. After the first day Campbell-James, the British team helmsman, and the British crew had comprehensively won their 7 races, all by half a leg, giving 10 penalties and receiving none. Campbell-James said ?the boys didn?t make an error all day?. Day 2 saw the wind increase to a fresh 25 knots. With 1 reef the Brits were still blisteringly fast but with 2 reefs they found they didn?t have so much speed and lost a race to the big boys in Germany 2. By the end of the day they were still leading.
The four highest teams then qualified for the next stage, the Semi-Finals, with the Team finishing first in the qualifying round robin being allowed to select their opponent. The Brits picked the Germans who had beaten them in the earlier rounds and then beat them by 3 straight races to proceed to the finals. The remaining two Teams one from Russia and one from France raced each other with the Russian team skippered by Eugeniy Neugodnikov also making the final.
In the Finals, the first Team to score at least three points was the winner of the First World University Match Racing Sailing Championship and Campbell-James, Cherry, Carr, Richmond and Hutton did this with 3 straight wins. The Russians getting penalties in each race.
A good start to the University long summer holiday for the British team with Campbell-James and Cherry going on to the Governors Cup, the US Youth Match Racing in California and then on to defend their British Youth National Match Racing title in August. Carr is going off to join the British Americas Cup team in New Zealand. Richmond is off to be the principal helmsman on Jacobite in Cork Week and Hutton is looking forward to sailing in the England red team in the Commodores Cup on Kerisma
Countries competing
ENGLAND CAMPBELL JAMES Paul
RUSSIA NEUGODNIKOV Eugeniy
FRANCE 1 JEHANNO Joann
GERMANY 2 ELLEGAST Tino
ITALY 1 ANTONINI Luca
GERMANY 1 HORSCH Sven Erik
FRANCE 2 FAGES Maxime
POLAND ARKADIUSZ Tetela
ITALY 2 SAVELLI Matteo
SLOVENIA ALBREHT Primois