Sunday 7 September 2008

BlackMatch Report on reaching the Semifinals in St Moritz


Adam Minoprio controls Peter Wibroe in their quarterfinal. Image copyright Loris von Siebenthal/www.myimage.ch

by David Swete

We won our way through the quarterfinals today with a 2-1 victory over Peter Wibroe, setting up a repeat of our semi-final encounter with Ian Williams and his Team Pindar in the Korea Match Cup. The Current World Tour Champion won narrowly on that occasion 3-2 and we are looking at going one better here in St Moritz to reach the final.

In an all French affair the other two competitors to proceed to the semi-finals were World #1 Mathieu Richard, who beat Jes Gram-hansen, and Philippe Presti who upset the 'in form' Sebastien Col.

Peter Wibroe was on fire sailing the new Blu 26 designed boats and every match was a fierce battle. At 1-1 and on match point we had an excellent start and forced the Danish team to be slow at the committee boat and heading to the right hand side of the course, they, however, picked up a very good wind-shift and held a 3 boat length lead at the top mark.

We made in-roads down the first run and gybed inside Wibroe at the perfect time for a puff of breeze that carried us into the lead by the bottom mark. We covered him very tightly for the rest of the race, not giving an inch and managed to hold on for the win, taking us through to our second World Tour semi-final this year.

It is again very exciting to have the prospect of winning a World Tour Event and although we are racing the reigning St Moritz Champion, we are looking forward to getting revenge for Korea.

We would again like to acknowledge our long term sponsors FedEx Express and Ross Munro from Line 7, their ongoing support is making it possible for us to be over here in our long term quest to win the World Match Racing Tour. To the RNZYS and everyone else, thank you for your support.

BlackMatch Racing

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