Team USA's Anna Tunnicliffe and crew Deborah Capozzi and SDYC's Molly Vandemoer secured the USA team a gold medal with superb sailing against Great Britain’s Lucy Macgregor in the Women’s Match Racing final on Fremantle’s Inner Harbour.
“It’s amazing, we’ve put a lot of effort into this year and had a lot of big events we had to get through and this has really topped off all our hard training,” Tunnicliffe said. “The team sailed really well, it was tricky conditions, conditions that we actually thought we were weakest in so we’re psyched we came out on top.”
Tunnicliffe secured the gold in front of a packed grandstand with four straight wins, despite some very tight sailing from Macgregor who was beset by penalties through the afternoon.
“It was so close, neither team could give up. Everyone was pushing it to the limit,” Tunnicliffe said. “In the last race it was an inch or two to the finish line. That pretty much summed up the racing.”
“We made some monumental mistakes in getting penalties,” silver medallist Lucy Macgregor said.
It was a game of cat and mouse between the two contending world champions and at one point their boats were close enough to touch as they rounded the windward mark, drawing gasps from the crowd.
“It was close all around and Lucy is a great competitor, her team is awesome and we just had so much fun sailing against them,” Tunnicliffe said.
“It was incredibly hard, but a ton of fun,” added USA crew Molly Vandemoer. “It was never over ‘til the very, very end.”
France’s Claire Leroy took out the bronze medal in the petite final against Russia’s Ekaterina Skudina. After being even on one match apiece and with a number of lead changes between the French and the Russians, Leroy won the next two matches to take the bronze. Despite some hard fought sailing from Skudina, Leroy never thought she would lose third place.
“We were not worried. We were ready to fight and we just took it match after match,” Leroy said. “We knew at this level all the girls are really, really good so we did what we had to do.”