The USA’s Anna Tunnicliffe has taken the Women’s Match Racing gold medal in the final against Great Britain’s Lucy Macgregor in front of a packed grandstand at Fremantle’s Inner Harbour.
“It’s amazing, we’ve put a lot of effort into this year and had a lot of big events we had to get through and this has really topped off all our hard training,” Tunnicliffe said.
“The team sailed really well, it was tricky conditions, conditions that we actually thought we were weakest in so we’re psyched we came out on top.”
Tunnicliffe secured the gold with four straight wins on Day 14 of the Perth 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships, despite some very tight sailing from Macgregor who was beset by penalties through the afternoon.
“It was so close, neither team could give up. Everyone was pushing it to the limit,” Tunnicliffe said. “In the last race it was an inch or two to the finish line, that pretty much summed up the racing.”
“We made some monumental mistakes in getting penalties,” said silver medallist Lucy Macgregor.
It was a game of cat and mouse between the two contending world champions, and at one point they were close enough to touch each other as they rounded the windward mark, drawing gasps from the crowd.
“It was close all around and Lucy is a great competitor, her team is awesome and we just had so much fun sailing against them,” Tunnicliffe said.
“It was incredibly hard, but a ton of fun,” the USA’s Molly Vandemoer said. “It was never over till the very, very end.”
“It’s been frustrating,” Great Britain’s Annie Lush said. “It’s been a great two weeks, but a very hard two weeks.”
France’s Claire Leroy took out the bronze medal in the petit final against Russia’s Ekaterina Skudina.
After being even on one match apiece and with a number of lead changes between the French and the Russians, Leroy won the next two matches to take the bronze.
Despite some hard fought sailing from Skudina, Leroy never thought she would lose third place.
“We were not worried. We were ready to fight and we just took it match after match,” Leroy said. “We knew at this level all the girls are really, really good so we did what we had to do.”
A good sea breeze blowing up the middle of the harbour made for great sailing conditions and ensured the action was close at hand for the spectators.
(From the Perth 2011 website: www.Perth2011.com)
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