29er Worlds at Riva del Garda, Lake Garda, Italy - Overall
by Jerelyn Biehl 25 Jul 2009 21:00 BST
18-25 July 2009
Steven Thomas repeated his title of 29er World Champion adding Blair Tuke of NZL as his crew this time around. The duo carried on their top sailing from the 49er Worlds the week prior pairing up and stepping into the 29er to place no worse than 3rd, and sailing so consistently they were able to not sail the final 2 races.
The battle on the final day was between the Outteridge siblings also of Australia. In the end big brother Nathan with skipper Lauren Jeffries out sailed his sister to take 2nd overall. Haylee with Iain Jensen as crew finished 3rd overall just 2 points behind.
Max Richardson and Alex Groves of GBR were the top placing youth team finished 4th in the Gold fleet while Ida Marie Baad Nielsen and Marie Thusgaard Olsen of Denmark won the top placing female team.
The 54 boat silver fleet was won by Americans Paris Henken with Chris Rast as crew, another 49er Olympic sailor in the front of the boat. The Bronze fleet was won by Sinem Kurtbay and Ville Bergman of Finland with the Emerald fleet winners Casey McDermott and Chantelle Boudreau of Canada.
The 186 teams represented 20 countries including entries from Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands and United Arab Emirates as well as established European, America, Argentina and the ever strong Australians show the broad reach and popularity of the skiff and acceptance worldwide The 29er is an open class in the ISAF Youth World Championship. This was the largest 29er World Championship it the classes 10 year history.
For more information, video, photos and results see www.29er.org and www.29erworlds.org