Promising Future for Youth Sailors

Promising Future for Youth Sailors
Yachting New Zealand Official Media Release
Date: 9 April 2004

Issued By: Julie Worth

New Zealand's top youth sailors put themselves in a great position to represent New Zealand at the ISAF World Youth Sailing Championships later in the year with some top results at the Laser Radial Open World Championships.

Blair McLay (4th) and Jane Macky (6th) were the highest placed New Zealand sailors at the World Champs, where racing concluded yesterday. Although these sailors still need to win their selection in a couple of weeks time in New Zealand, they must be feeling confident about their ability to come out on top against New Zealand's other youth sailors from their successful results this week.

They weren't the only kiwis to finish high up in the field with Miranda Powrie (7th) and Jo Aleh (9th) both finishing in the top ten in the open women's fleet.

In the men's fleet Australian Olympic representative Michael Blackburn cleaned up the fleet winning nine of the 11 races in the series showing he was a step above the rest of the fleet. New Zealand sailor Matt Blakey started off the regatta in the top three, but struggled to maintain the consistency throughout the whole regatta, dropping back to 10th overall. Two sailors to perform consistently for New Zealand were Mark Orams (5th) and Jason Geale (6th), both of whom had top ten races for the majority of the regatta.

"This is a pleasing result for New Zealand, showing plenty of depth in the Laser and Laser Radial classes, and we hope to see many of these sailors to continue to perform internationally", comments Peter Lester, Yachting New Zealand's High Performance Manager.

The New Zealand Men's results were:

Blair McLay - 4th, Mark Orams - 5th, Jason Geale - 6th, Matt Blakey - 10th, Jake Bartrom - 12th, Martin Winter - 14th, Craig Prentice - 15th, Thomas Powrie - 21st, Matt Coutts - 29th, Andrew Mowlem - 36th, Aaron Hume-Merry - 41st, Blair Lindsay - 43rd, Alex Kafka - 45th,
Hadleigh Prendergast - 63rd

Th Women's results for the New Zealand sailors were:
Jane Macky - 6th, Miranda Powrie - 7th, Jo Aleh - 9th, Shelley Bassett - 13th, Robyn Prentice - 15th, Sara Winther - 36th

A full set of results can be found at http://www.rqys.com.au/index.html.

Racing will begin for the Laser Radial Youth World Championships on Monday 12 April.

ENDS



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