BlackMatch through to quarterfinals in France

by David Swete

On completion of our five remaining round robin races today, we found ourselves with a scorecard of 7 wins and 4 losses. Narrow defeats today against Mathieu Richard and Damien Iehl meant we finished tied on points in 4th position, however we lost out on ‘count back’ to yet another Frenchman Pierre Antoine Morvan, which sealed a top 4 total French domination.

The reward for the teams in the top four was a direct path to the quarterfinals, while all other teams were to race in a repechage series to decide the four remaining semi final berths. Our match up in the repechage was against Henrique Haddad and although the up and coming Brazilian put up a good fight, we won through 2 nil.

Our closest match of the day was against Australian rival Keith Swinton. Keith and his multi-national team held the early advantage in the race and it was not until we picked up a nice wind-shift nearing the top mark that we were able to snatch a narrow lead which we held to the finish.

Although we haven’t had it all our own way it was great to get through to the quarterfinals. With such a high level of competition anyone can win if they are on top of their game and a great example of this today was between the two Danish skippers Peter Wibroe and Mads Ebler. Ebler had shown great form throughout the event managing 7 wins while countryman Wibroe could only manage a single win at the completion of the round robin. However in a dramatic turnaround it was the bottom qualifier Wibroe who snatched a last gasp win in a dramatic deciding race to advance over a stunned Ebler.

We are yet to find out who our quarterfinal opponent will be tomorrow as the top four teams will have the choice of who they race, but we are looking forward to the challenge and are hoping to put a spanner in the works for the French teams.

BlackMatch would like to once again thank their loyal sponsors Fedex Express and Ross Munro from Line 7 New Zealand, without their support none of this would be possible. We would also like to thank our yacht club the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and Emirates Team New Zealand for their support.

French Match Racing