Friday 26 September 2008

BlackMatch Report on Day One of the Portugal World Tour Event


Adam Minoprio leads Manuel Weiller on Day One of the Troia Match Cup. Image copyright Wander Roberto.

by David Swete

BlackMatch are currently competing in the Portugal Match World Tour event. Wednesday started off extremely slowly, with racing not getting underway until a steady sea breeze filled in around 2pm.

Once the sea breeze kicked in conditions were absolutely perfect for match racing. However, our start to the regatta was far from perfect, only managing 1 win from our 5 races. The format for the regatta allows for one full round robin with the top 8 teams progressing through to the quarterfinals. This means that after our slow start we will definitely have to step our game up Thursday.

Our losses Wednesday included tight matches against World #1 Mathieu Richard and Torvar Mirsky, but we also had a surprise loss to local talent Alvaro Marinho. We had a massive lead going into the final downwind against Marinho and after fully dominating the race, the wind unmercifully shut down late in the evening and the Portuguese team ghosted past us on the finish line to take the victory.

Thursday will see us sitting out the next 6 races as other teams take to the water, we are looking forward to taking in some of the action and improving on today to hopefully qualify for the top 8.

We would again like to thank our sponsors: FedEx Express and Ross Munro from Line 7. To the RNZYS and everyone else, thank you for your support.

BlackMatch Racing

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