Team Race Finals
May 20- Hello all-I am writing to you after an intense finals to win the Team Race discipline at the World Sailing Games in Austria. We took the Brits in a best-of-five race series. A quick recap for the event: 10 days of competition, including a win in the qualifying series of 11 teams for the first five days, followed by the arrival of the top three teams in the World. We held our own in the following round robins to advance to the top eight knock-out series. We beat the Australians in the quarterfinals leaving four remaining teams (three U.S. teams!) The top ranked team USA 3 (aka Silver Panda) had the choice to race the British team, USA 2 (aka Whishbone), or us. We were chosen and we were on fire. (They picked wrong I think!) It was tough but we dominated. Now on to the final day: USA 1 vs. GBR 1, hundreds of spectators, helicoptors, news cameras, and a whole lot of chaos. Cheering sections battles of British vs. USA and support from all the Olympic class fleets. We sailed on in style, keeping composure and creating play after play to add up to winning combinations. Two-on-two team racing is also known as last boat loses. A further explanation is as long as you or your teammate are not in last of the four boats, your team wins. It is similar to two match races taking place at one time. We were down 1-0 after a tough first match, but we rallied hard to win the second. It got to a tie with both teams having won 2. It all comes down to one race. Wow was it exciting. We changed leads in the race several times and the shouting and fighting level was high. We clinched the winning combo by pinning one GBR boat to the right of the finish. He tried to get out and we had him locked out and aiming at an umpire boat. He used the rules to fight for a re-sail claiming this umpire boat “seriously interfered” with his race, ignoring the fact that we had him worked. A re-sail was granted and we could hear the fans “Seal the deal, seal the deal!” So we did!! The Brits were defeated 4-2. My teammates, Caleb Silsby, Paige Hannon (soon to be Mr and Mrs Silsby), and Danny Pletsch were awesome. -Carrie Howe
