Kiwi sailors well-placed to medal at Mallorca regatta

Logan Dunning Beck and Oscar Gunn compete in their 49er. Photo / Yachting NZ

Kiwi 49er sailors Logan Dunning Beck and Oscar Gunn have put themselves in the box seat for their first gold medal of the sailing season after two big wins at the Princess Sofia Regatta in Mallorca this week.

The victories, sparked by a change of strategy, saw the pair jump 10 places to the top of the gold fleet after a tweak to their starting approach on the first day of finals racing.

After three days of qualifying heats, more than 1200 sailors across 10 Olympic classes have been split into gold and silver fleets, leading to plenty of movement on the leaderboards.

“The first day of gold fleet is always a moving day and there’s always a lot of shuffling on the leaderboard. It’s when the real racing begins and you get to race everyone in that top 25.” Gunn said.

“The plan for us today was just to improve on our starting from the earlier part of the regatta, so we made some changes overnight to the way we approached the start line. We wanted to ensure we got some good starts and then just have a clear plan of how the race would play out. And it’s kind of how things went.”

Dunning Beck and Gunn have now risen 21 spots over the last two days and are five points clear of Poland’s Lukasz Przybytek and Jacek Piasecki.

Hot on their heels are fellow Kiwis Isaac McHardie and William McKenzie, who have been near the front of the fleet all regatta.

The pair took out today’s first race and are third overall – only six points behind Dunning Beck and Gunn.

Despite vying for the same 49er spot at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, the two teams have been working closely together as part of Yachting New Zealand’s high-performance approach over the past year – ramping up their efforts on speed and equipment testing during the NZ summer.

“It was a solid day for both teams,” Gunn said. “They [McHardie and McKenzie] didn’t have the best start but were going really fast and managed to get themselves back into that top bunch.”

There will be one more day of gold-fleet racing before the medal race on Sunday.

“It’s going to be an exciting end to the regatta. The points are all close, so it’s all to play for,” Gunn said.

“Another good day tomorrow really puts us in a good position going into the medal race.”

Also in podium contention is Veerle ten Have, who sits third after winning the first of her two medal races in the iQFOIL (windfoiling) class for women.

Ten Have is only 17 points behind leader Lola Sorin of France.

“It felt really good to finally get a race win – it’s been coming,” ten Have said. “I got a bit stuck in the second race – it got really, really light and I was probably last coming through the start. Because I have worked so much on my fitness over the last year, I was able to pump the rest of the race down and gain a lot of that ground back and still ended up with a top-10 result, which I was happy with.”

The 22-year-old from Tauranga is cautiously optimistic about silverware in her first European outing of the season.

“Today’s results don’t mean too much, as we can still drop a few tomorrow,” she said.

“It’ll shuffle around just as much tomorrow as it did today, so I’ll just go out there and do my best.”

Josh Armit remains in the hunt too. He is in eighth in the men’s iQFOIL division – after a race win to end his day.

Former ILCA 7 (Laser) world champion Tom Saunders is third, two points off silver and 18 behind competition leader – Britain’s Michael Beckett.

Saunders managed an eighth and ninth but was ruing a disqualification for a false start in the second race.

“It was still a pretty tough day out there and Micky was the only guy who really had things figured out,” Saunders said.

“I’m kicking myself a bit for letting a few opportunities slip on top of the BFD (black flag), unfortunately. But I’m still right in there and I just need to clean up a few things for tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, George Gautrey’s impressive form continued with three top-10 finishes overnight. He is seventh overall, 13 points behind Saunders.