Top teams for compasscard Australian Women’s Match Racing Championship

Ten teams are now lining up for the compasscard Australian Women’s Match Racing Championship for 2009. The event is gearing up to be an exciting one with the four Australian Sailing Development Squad (ASDS) crews who have recently returned from a very successful two months in Europe.

They are being joined by two teams from Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron skippered by Samantha Osborne and Stephanie Hazard who will bring their teams to Sydney following their recent selection into the New Zealand Olympic Match Racing Squad. They are keen to go up against the four ASDS crews and all six teams have elected to sail the Elliott 6 boats three up in this event as this will be the crew format in the Olympics in 2012.

It has been twelve months since the selection of the women’s match racing sailors to the ASDS following this event in Fremantle last September. Katie Spithill, Nicky Souter, Lucinda Whitty and Amanda Scrivenor will skipper crews in this national event and they have had a busy year. Arriving back in Australia only two weeks ago, the girls have had a successful summer season in Europe. The squad has returned with gold medals from the Women’s World Match Racing Championship and Match Cup in Sweden, Kiel Week in Germany and Maggiore Cup in Italy and silver medals from Kiel Week and Berlin Match Cup amongst their spoils.

The other Australian skippers will be Catherine Trew from the CYCA, Nadia Punselie (Royal Freshwater Bay YC), Claire Hunting (Sandringham YC), and Amy Lee (Royal Sydney YS).

Commenting on the ASDS success Nicky Souter said ’The ASDS members have been training pretty hard over the last year; focusing mainly on the Elliott 6’s as these boats are the selected equipment for Women’s Olympic match racing. With such a successful trip over to Europe this year, our squad has shown all the other nations that we are already one step ahead of them in campaigning towards 2012.

(Article by Pam Scrivenor on the Sail-World website: http://www.sail-world.com)