Aspiring Womenʼs Olympic teams continued their winning ways from Day One, but get challenged by Open teams

After two days of racing on Biscayne Bay, Anna Tunnicliffe (USA) and her team (Molly O’Bryan Vandemoer and Debbie Capozzi) have won the inaugural Elliott 6m Miami Open Invitational hosted by Chicago Match Race Center and Sail Sheboygan.

On the strength of an impressive 14-2 win-loss record, Anna Tunnicliffe and her Team Tunnicliffe (Debbie Capozzi and Molly Vandemoer) have won the 2011 Miami Invitational, concluded yesterday in Miamiʼs Biscayne Bay. The two-time Rolex Yachtswoman of the Year award winner and her team showed a consistency and mastery of the Elliott 6M keelboat that revealed their extensive training as part of the US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics on the road to the 2012 Olympic Games.

Runners-up in this ISAF Open Grade 3 event on scores of 12-4 were Silja Lehtinen and her Team Finland of Silja Kanerva and Mikaela Wulff, also aspiring Olympians to the 2012 Games.

The morningʼs very light conditions prevented completion of an intended second stage of round-robin sailing among the 1st-4th and 5th-8th-placed teams from the double Round Robin, but the building seabreeze yesterday did allow for each team to race 16 matches in two days of competition. Responsive race management from PRO Rich Reichelsdorfer from Sail Sheboygan and his team of Dick Schweers and Darcy Cook from the Chicago Match Race Center (CMRC) kept courses square with the shifts and running on time.

There were many close matches in the event, but perhaps the most remarkable story was the meteoric rise up through the ranks of another Team AlphaGraphic member, Sally Barkow and her team of Maggie Shea and Jen Wilson, who were substituting for Sallyʼs normal team for this regatta. After a rough start of losing to all three other Womenʼs teams in their first three flights, Barkow and team pulled themselves together to reverse that trend, winning all but two matches in the second Round Robin, including against Tunnicliffe and Lehtinen.

The top-finishing Open team got onto the podium in third place. Taylor Canfield of the US Virgin Islands, with his crew of Tom Barrows and Darby Smith, used his recent experience as an Intercollegiate champion to step into the dinghy-like Elliottʼs and still amass a credible 11-5 record
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FINAL Results after Double Round Robin:
1. Anna Tunnicliffe (USA) 14-2
2. Silja Lehtinen (FIN) 12-4
3. Taylor Canfield (ISV) 11-5
4. Genny Tulloch (USA) 10-6
5. Steve Hunt (USA) 8-8
6. Sally Barkow (USA) 8-8
7. Andrew Campbell (USA) 6-10
8. Don Wilson (USA) 3-13
9. Leo Vasiliev (USA) 0-16

View complete results here: 2011MiamiInv-FinalResults.pdf

For more information on CMRC and its events, please visit www.chicagomatchrace.com.
For more information on Sail Sheboygan and its events, please visit www.sailsheboygan.org.