Adam Minoprio versus Andy Horton in Bermuda. Image copyright Charles Anderson.
by David Swete
Day two of racing at the King Edward VII Gold Cup was sailed in perfect match racing conditions. Although extremely shifty there was an 8-12 knot breeze making for great racing that provided many upsets.
All of the groups still have one race left to complete the round robin and in our group despite the hiccup with our boom breaking yesterday. We kept ourselves in contention today with 2 wins and a loss to World Champion, Ian Williams.
We come up against Australian Keith Swinton in our final race of the round robin tomorrow. It is a must win for us to remain in contention for a direct route to the quarterfinals. Ian Williams has already qualified with a perfect scorecard while a big surprise is Andy Horton from the US who only has 1 loss. Horton and his talented Prada crew are racing Williams tomorrow and if the Brits can continue their winning form and we take the victory over Swinton, we will qualify for the final 8.
The biggest surprise of our pool was perhaps the poor form of last year's runner up Bjorn Hansen. The talented Swede has only managed 2 wins so far and is faced not only with missing out on the quarterfinals, but also the repechage series. Bjorn dominated the majority of the pre-start during our confrontation until Adam managed to out manoeuvre him in the last 30 seconds to lead off the start line. We sailed the shifts very well to extend our lead throughout the race while the World #6 was left helplessly in our wake.
With 4 wins, 2 losses we are looking forward to tomorrows racing and the Australia verses New Zealand showdown for our shot at the quarterfinals.
We would again like to say a special thank you to our sponsors, FedEx Express and Ross Munro from Line 7, their ongoing support is making this opportunity possible for the BlackMatch boys. To the RNZYS and everyone else thank you for your support.
BlackMatch Racing
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