RYA Youth Match Racing Championships at the WPNSA

James French, Robbie Southwell and Ed Collinge in action at the RYA Youth Match Racing Championships © Nigel Vick

French and Rainback claim RYA National Match Racing Final youth places

Battling winds gusting 25 knots, it was 18-year-old James French and 19-year-old Matthew Rainback who secured the Under 20 and Under 25 youth places up for grabs at the RYA’s National Match Racing Series Grand Final competing at this weekend’s (28-29 August) RYA Youth Match Racing Championships staged at Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy.

With winds blowing a solid 23-25 knots, racing was cut short Sunday lunchtime meaning the Grand Final spots were decided on what turned out to be an extremely tightly contested round-robin stage with many races going right down to the wire. In total nine crews went head-to-head for the event honours and the chance to compete at the final many racing for the first time in the RYA’s fleet of Olympic class Elliot 6m keelboats.

Returning to the event for the second time French and his young crew from Gurnard Yacht Club took the difficult conditions and brand new boats in their stride winning four of their eight matches to finish top Under 20 boat.

French commented: “It feels pretty good to be competing against the best match racers in the country at the final – we’ve got to do a lot of training to get a bit better and hopefully we’ll be a bit more competitive against the older teams at the event.”

“The racing was really tight and I didn’t think we had done particularly well at the time. We missed one of our matches that would have been nice to win messing our timing up and giving ourselves a penalty so we were a bit annoyed with ourselves for that. We could have definitely done better if we hadn’t done that ! ”

In picking up the Under 20 title at the event, French also secured his team a place at the international junior match racing Governor’s Cup which will be held in the USA next July and with ambitions to compete on the World Match Racing Tour the young crew are set to learn some useful lessons.

“It feels amazing to be going to the Governer’s Cup. Match racing against international teams will be a great experience and I’m sure we’ll learn a lot. There will be some considerable pressure on us to try and defend GBR’s title won this year but we’re training today and heading out to Italy for the Italiana Cup next week which will be really good training for us.”

Young Australian skipper David Chapman won the event in straight wins but Itchenor Yacht Club’s Andy Shaw was top finishing British Under 25 crew at the event. However with Shaw having already qualified for the finals by winning the BUSA (British Universities Sailing Association) Match Racing Championships, a previous qualifying event, the finals place was awarded to second placed all Under 25 GBR crew Matthew Rainback and his fellow Exeter University Sailing Club team.

He commented: “As a team we were pretty happy with the weekend. We certainly learnt a lot as we’ve not done a lot of match racing before. Between the first race Saturday and the last race Sunday we certainly upped our game quite a lot. It was a bit unfortunate we couldn’t do the finals and semi-finals - as we improved over the weekend it would have been good to see how we faired against the better teams towards the end but overall we’re really happy especially qualifying for the finals as we didn’t expect that.”

Rainback and his ex-RYA Volvo National Youth Squad line-up, Tim Saxton and Ben Musket, mainly sail on the smaller boat circuit but having posted promising results at the weekend he admits they are looking to do more in the way of bigger boat match racing from now on.

“We did the Laser SB3 Worlds this year and got a good result [third] there and this week we’re doing the nationals. Tim [Saxton] and I do RS800 sailing but I think we are more keen to get into a bit more match racing now and on to the circuit. We’ve definitely been spurred on by this result.”

The RYA altered the qualification criteria for the finals this year allowing for more young crews to compete, championing a wider range of young talent and offering them a greater insight into top level competition. With two 16-year-old skippers, Sophie French and Arthur Romano, finishing in credible seventh and eighth positions during what was very close racing at the event, it is evident there are some great up-and-coming young match racers ready to push through into higher level competition.

In posting what the RYA felt was a very impressive performance at the event, Sophie French and her all female crew, Amy Ferris, Natalie Gill and Hannah Shields also received a special invite to the Women’s National Match Racing Championships in October where they will get the chance to compete against the likes of world number one Lucy Macgregor and other members of Skandia Team GBR’s Match Racing Academy.

The RYA National Match Racing Grand final will take place at Queen Mary Reservoir (22-24 October) with Rainback and French joining the top performing British crews from Septembers open qualifier and women’s events along with; the top three open GBR ISAF ranked and top Women’s GBR ISAF ranked skippers from July’s rankings, defending 2009 National Match Racing Champions Mark Campbell-James and his crew, as well as the winners from the Mermaid Match Racing Championships, BUSA Match Racing Championships and Ceilidh Cup, at the October final.

For further information visit www.rya.org.uk/racing and follow the links to ‘Keelboat Match Racing’.

Overall Results:

1) David Chapman, AUS
2) Andy Shaw, GBR
3) Matt Rainback, GBR
4) Ben Ainsworth, GBR
5) Mark Lees, GBR
6) James French, GBR (Under 20)
7) Arthur Romano, GBR (Under 20)
8) Sophie French, GBR (Under 20)
9) Theo Hoole, GBR