The adrenaline continued throughout the day with surely the highlight of the day coming in the first match between twelfth seed Heart of America skippered by Andrew Campbell and Sam Gilmour of Neptune Racing.
America’s Cup sailor Campbell has been a welcome surprise in Chicago, improving throughout his first WMRT event racing the M32 catamaran and cleanly finished ahead of the Australian. Despite Campbell’s great form in that match, the experience of Gilmour in these boats trumped and took him on to win the following three matches. Gilmour commented, “We are happy to make it to the quarters; the guys I’m sailing with - Adam Negri, Mark Spearman and Justin Wong - did a really good job. We’re really hoping we can make it past the quarters; we’ll be racing Yann Guichard who we’ve come up against in the last three events. We won the last one but he won the two before that. If we can get through this, then we know we can beat anybody after. So we need to keep pushing and not get ahead of ourselves.”
Newcomer to the World Match Racing Tour, Frenchman Quentin Delapierre, looked dominant in his opening race against seasoned M32 sailor Nicklas Dackhammar. The Swede has been fleet racing the M32 since 2014, but only joined the Tour last season, and so it was surprising to see him fall behind. Delapierre’s vast multihull sailing talent has clearly been transferrable to the M32 and he has shown ballsy moves so far in this competition.
After leading around the course in the opening match of this pairing, the French team got caught out at the final mark when Dackhammar caught up and took the lead which he held to the finish. Taking one more each, Dackhammar was down to match point. Delapierre threw everything he had at the match, aggressively luffing coming into the final mark. The umpires considered it too aggressive and gave the penalty to Delapierre, but at this late stage in the race, there was no opportunity for the French to get back into the race, handing the win and the ticket to the Quarter Final stage to Dackhammar’s Essiq Racing Team.
Team Magenta 32’s Sally Barkow took the early lead in the local battle against US Virgin Islander Taylor Canfield (Canfield was previously quoted stating Chicago as a “home away from home”). As the pair looked evenly balanced around the course, Barkow’s efforts were cut short by hour-glassing the gennaker and struggling to furl. Canfield went on to take the pairing 3-1.
Looking towards the rest of the fleet, Ian Williams also took a 3-1 victory over Denmark’s Jonas Warrer whilst David Gilmour and Yann Guichard wiped a 3-0 scoreline over Pieter-Jan Postma and Nevin Snow respectively.
Local hopes now fall solely on the shoulders of Taylor Canfield and his US One team as they prepare for tomorrow’s match against Nicklas Dackhammar.
Racing continues tomorrow morning with Quarter Finals beginning immediately following the conclusion of the Super 16 Round as Matt Jerwood and Chris Steele are the final pair to sail. Tune in to Facebook and wmrt.com for live video and all the action as we will see our final four of the competition.
SUPER 16 HIGHLIGHTS
SUPER 16
PAIR 1 - Still to sail
Matt Jerwood (AUS), Redline Racing Vs. Chris Steele (NZL), 36 Below Racing
PAIR 2
Phil Robertson (NZL), China One Ningbo 3 - 2 Evan Walker (AUS), KA Match
PAIR 3
Taylor Canfield (ISV), US One Sailing Team 3 - 1 Sally Barkow (USA, Team Magenta 32
PAIR 4
Yann Guichard (FRA), Spindrift Racing 3 - 0 Nevin Snow (USA), 13 Fifty Racing
PAIR 5
Sam Gilmour (AUS), Neptune Racing 3 - 1 Andrew Campbell (USA), Heart of America
PAIR 6
Nicklas Dackhammar (SWE), Essiq Racing Team 3 - 1 Quentin Delapierre (FRA), Team Lorina - Golfe du Morbihan
PAIR 7
David Gilmour (AUS), Team Gilmour 3 - 0 Pieter-Jan Postma (NED), Sailing Team NL
PAIR 8
Ian Williams (GBR), GAC Pindar 3 - 1 Jonas Warrer (DEN), Warrer Racing
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