Minoprio beats Coutts to win Lugano Match Racing

by Sail-World NZL on 5 Jun 2006 The Vision Yachting crew led by Simon Minoprio (RNZYS) have won the ISAF Grade 2 Match Racing event in Lugano in Italy, beating Russell Coutts and several other top match racing competitors.

Simon Minoprio reports: 'A light start to the day with the semi finals resuming after yesterday afternoon. We were paired against Peter Webroe (Denmark) and then in the other semi final Antoine Morvan versus Russell Coutts.

We sailed the shifts extremely well, as hard as it was, we took a two nil victory to go straight through to the finals.

In the other match however, an extremely big upset - Morvan beating Russell two/one. It was a Minoprio Morvan grand final.

With Russell now in the Petit final, we had a little bit of breathing room. Morvan won the first race hands down. We won the second race convincingly, Morvan won the third, we won the fourth. This meant full game on, with two a piece - one more race to go.

An even start, we were in a controlling position and managed to get the upper hand. We extended the whole way round the three lap coarse to take the victory of Lugano Match Race 2006 champions.

We believe we sailed extremely well in the conditions here at Lake Lugano. We kept our heads down and came out on top.

Thank you to everyone who has responded to our email updates, and a huge thanks to Ross Munro and Greg Flynn from Line 7 NZ, and The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron for their ongoing support towards Vision Yachting.

Two days to relax, then next regatta starts on Tuesday - Trophio Trombini in Ravenna, Italy.

Cheers,
Team for the event, Vision Yachting
Ryan Houston,
Hayden Goodrick,
Simon Minoprio.

Match Race Lugano - ISAF Grade 2 Gran Premio Città di Lugano 2006 edition results ROUND ROBIN (*) To Laurie Jury 0.5 points of penalty.

1. Russell Coutts 2. Simon Minoprio 3. Peter Wibroe 4. P. Antoine Morvan 5. Przemek Tarnacki 6. Takumi Nakamura 7. Laurie Jury 8. Brian Angel 9. Sven-Erik Horsch 10. Jan Eike Andresen 11. Fabio Mazzoni 12. Marcel Walser 1.   2.   3.   4.   5.   6.   7.   8.   9.   10.   11.   12.      0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1    1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0    1 1 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0    1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0    1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0    0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1    0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1    1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0    1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0    1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0    0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1     Tot  9 9 7 8 5 1 5.5* 6 3 3 5 4  Pos  2 1 4 3 8 12 6 5 10 11 7 9