BLACKMATCH - St. Moritz Match Cup 09 Winners

Report from Dave Swete - Blackmatch - 9 Sept 09

Hi all from BlackMatch,
Following our victory in St Moritz on Sunday, Black Match would like to send a special mention to their Sponsor Fedex Express, notably David Ross from Fedex who has been instrumental in our recent success. We would also like to thank Ross Munro for keeping us looking sharp in our Line 7 crew gear and also the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron and Emirates Team New Zealand for their incredible support throughout the years.

We gained momentum.........

Getting past the legendary Peter Gilmour and current double World Match Racing Champion Ian Williams unbeaten in our quarterfinal and semi final match ups, we had gained momentum throughout the regatta and defeated Australian Torvar Mirsky in the final 2-1, with a great display of light airs sailing. After arguably our worst ever start to a regatta, we then went on to win 8 races in a row before dropping one against Torvar in the final.
The first race went to us when Adam did a great job in the pre-start and we held a significant advantage by the top mark. The Australians gained in on us on the first downwind when the breeze shut down but were handed a double penalty as they forced their way between us and the bottom mark when they clearly did not have an overlap, this essentially handed us the race.
Race two and again Adam did a great job in the start but nearing the top mark we had gained in on Ian Williams who was in a separate match, racing in the petit final. It was an unfortunate set of circumstances but the ultimate result was that Ian was going to a different top mark and was holding us out, we actually had to gybe to get around him and by the time we had reached the top mark, Torvar had gained the lead. We protested this race as we have seen redress given for far less severe interference from another match, however it was upheld and the result stood.
Perhaps this fired us up because we totally dominated the third and deciding match from start to finish to be crowned the 2009 St Moritz World Tour Champions. 
Today the team has a layday in London before travelling to Denmark tonight for our next tour event. It is with great regret that Super Dan (Dan Mclean) has had to withdraw from this event having injured his shoulder while sailing with Francesco Bruni last week. Last night we were frantically looking for a replacement and we would like to welcome aboard Mads Elber from Denmark to our team this week. Mads is a great matchracer, currently he has an ISAF World ranking of 12 as a helmsman and we are hoping his local knowlege come into play.
Thank you also to all of our supporters and friends and also to our resident cameraman for the week Jenny Warner.
Blackmatch is Adam Minoprio, David Swete, Tom Powrie, Nick Blackman, Dan Mclean and this week Mads Elber.  
David Swete
BLACKMATCH Racing