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Sail-World.com : Laser Radial World 2010 Championship - Day one freezing in Scotland

Laser Radial World 2010 Championship - Day one freezing in Scotland

'Laura Baldwin (Laser Radial) 2009 Sail Melbourne regatta - looking much comfortable than she reports she was today in Scotland' Jeff Crow/ Sport the Library ©

2010 Laser Radial World Championship in Largs, Scotland - Australia’s four entrants in the women’s competition having mixed results after the opening two races in cold conditions.

Laura Baldwin is the best placed Australian in 17th position after a ninth in race one and a 14th in race two. Baldwin, who represented Great Britain at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and is now a part of the Australian Sailing Development Squad, is on 23 points, just nine off the top ten and now we know why she migrated to Australia.

Laura Baldwin explained her day. ‘The venue is a challenging one with all the land influence and tide, but today's winds made it even more demanding. The forecast was for erratic and irregular shifts all day due to rainsqualls and turning right all day. The first race saw the course set at 180. The waters were choppy and winds whipped up to 15 knots. The right was generally favoured and it was a hike off to the top mark.

‘I had to tack out of a bad start but quickly got clear and got back into the race and finished ninth - a good start to the regatta. We had a long wait between races as the wind flipped round to 300 degrees bringing a large squall and pounding rain. I was unpleasantly cold, shivering uncontrollably until race two got underway.

‘I had a great start this time and hiked hard up the first beat in the strong winds and steep waves. The wind strength dropped considerably up the second beat and that caused quite a few place changes. I managed to take five boats around the second leg to finish 14th.

‘I’m currently 64kgs (70kg is ideal) so I am really happy to be holding on upwind. I got flight flu for a week when I arrived and lost three kilos, I has lost two kilos before I left, just from hitting the gym.

‘I don't know what the wind got up to, it really was pretty windy, and there were decent white caps around.

‘My old coach drove by me between the races and said, 'I can see why you immigrated now!'

Ashley Stoddart is just four places behind Baldwin in 21st position following a great opening race in third position and then a 24th in race two. Stoddart, from Queensland, is just four points behind her fellow Australian.

The Australian Sailing Team’s Krystal Weir had a tough day on the water in Scotland, retiring from the opening race before bouncing back with a 12th in race two to be 49th overall.

'Today wasn’t the best way to start a World Championship but I’ll start from scratch tomorrow and push on from there,' said Weir. 'In the first race I had a port starboard incident off the start line and then capsized, after that I was very deep in the fleet and ended up in retiring.'

'Then in the second race I was doing really well and then lost six boats on the final run to the finish line,' she said. 'It was a tough day but you need them every now and then to stay grounded.'

'I’m looking forward to getting back on the water and getting more races under my belt, I’m learning from every race and my regatta starts again tomorrow,' said Weir.

Victorian Megan de Lange finished the opening day in 60th position and will confident of moving up the leader board following her recent strong showing at round six of the ISAF Sailing World Cup in Germany.

The sailors were greeted by a typical Scottish summer with cold temperatures and rain making life interesting on and off the water.

'It was super shifty on the course today,' said Weir. 'The breeze was very random with a lot of fronts coming through, I’d say it shifts from above 20 knots right down to about five through the day.'

'Race one was sailed in about 15 or 20 knots and race two kicked off in the same but fell away as we progressed,' she said. 'It seems very frontal here and hard to pick, you really have to sail what you get and make the most of it.'

Racing continues in Scotland on Saturday with the 2010 Laser Radial Women’s Champion to be crowned on July 14.

by Sail-World.com

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11:10 PM Fri 9 Jul 2010 GMT

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