Australia’s Tom King claims overall regatta victory: 2012 Etchells World Championship
Australian sailor, Tom King dominated the fleet with 38 points after nine races, including a discard, to clinch the 2012 Etchells World Championship title.
The top three podium places have been occupied by the Aussies who showed some excellent sailing genius on the offshore courses of Sydney Heads waters. King’s Iron Lotus had a convincing run throughout the regatta despite the fact that he was not able to
hit any bullet in his campaign.
King’s crew, comprising of Ivan Wheen, David Edwards and Owen McMahon grabbed some high finishes in the first days of the event but tumbled down in the middle with a 14th and a 16th podium. They managed to clinch the top spot with a fourth and fifth finish
in the last two races along with a discard.
King expressed his joy, “We've had a fantastic week and the worse we could do was third which would have been a great result we would have been happy with. The pressure was on John (Bertrand) and GT (Graeme Taylor) to have a great result if they were going
to beat us. Even if they did that and we had a good race, we would have been fine.”
The Iron Lotus skipper added, “The plan was to try and get off the start line cleanly somewhere near them. About half way up the last work we finally got the boat going really quickly and had enough of good shifts and got in front of them near the finish.”
Another Australian, Graeme Taylor finished on second position with 52 points. The Magpie crew of Graeme Taylor, Grant Simmer and Steve Jarvin had a tremendous start of the regatta as they took a bullet and a fourth finish on first day but after that they
could not keep their momentum and slowed a bit down with some low score. However, the team bounced back on the final day and hit the second podium place.
John Bertrand’s Triad team consisting of Tom Slingsby and David Giles were able to claim the third spot with 58 points. They had some lower podium finishes in the start but they had some good results in the middle which brought them on third spot.
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