Outteridge and Jensen win 2009 49er Worlds

11:55 PM Sun 19 Jul 2009 GMT

'Outteridge and Jensen after winning 49er Worlds' Richard Langdon /Ocean Images &copy Click Here to view large photo

Australian's Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen today won the 49er World Championships Riva del Garda, Italy.
Another light weather day and it was a good start for the Australian's who were the overnight leaders. They took a fourth in the first race of the day then an eighth in the final race.

They came home with a solid second in the medal race behind Peter and Soren Hansen (DEN). Brits John Pink and Rick Peacock finished the medal race in third place to take the silver medal ahead of Italy's Sibello brothers Pietro and Gianfranco. The 2007 World Champions Stevie Morrison and Ben Rhodes (GBR) were fourth.

After coming out of drug testing Outteridge commented. 'That was tough. Conditions were quite shifty, so it was hard work on the course. It was great to successfully defend the 2008 title and I am really pleased for Iain, his first senior world title.'

Outteridge said the victory was the perfect way to start the pair's campaign as the World Championships was just their second regatta together.

'It's pretty hard to win your first two regattas together but to have the Worlds as one of them is awesome,' said Outteridge. 'I couldn't be any happier at this stage, we had a good range of conditions here and we performed well in all of them.'

'The key to our win was being consistent and at the end of the regatta we only dropped 18 points while others around us were dropping 30 odd,' he said. 'We came here thinking that a finish in the top five or top ten would be good but to take the victory it couldn't have gone any better.'

Jensen was just as pleased, with the hard work the pair has been putting in on and off the water paying off.

'We've been doing a lot of training in the last few months, working on some areas where we weren't quite as quick as we'd like to be,' said Jensen. 'In Holland in May we were quick in the light winds and we knew we had a bit of work to do in the heavier stuff we'd face here in Italy so we've worked hard at that and it's paid off.'

The final day of racing featured two heats and the medal race with the early races held in winds of 17 to 19 knots. The Australian Sailing Team crew went into the medal race with a five point lead of local sailors Pietro and Gianfranco Sibello with racing held in eight to 12 knot winds.

In the medal race the Australians had a slow start and were in eighth place half way up the first beat. By exploiting one shift of gust near the top mark they rounded the first mark in sixth.

'Then the real good stuff begun to happen,' said 49er coach Emmett Lazich. 'The boys were blessed with a good burst of pressure down the early part of this run, and got the inside line on most boats ahead.'

'Perfect gybe timing and execution allowed a pass on three of those boats which put them into third position. If they could hold third, then no matter where anyone else placed, they would be the champions. But they went one better and moved into second place, passing the Sibello brothers,' said Lazich.

Outteridge and Jensen held onto second place for a fairly comfortable overall win.

Elsewhere in the gold fleet the Australian Sailing Development Squad crew of Will and Sam Phillips finished 15th overall, a great performance given it was Sam's second ever 49er regatta outside Australia while fellow Australian's Euan McNicol and Sam Newton finished 19th, another strong result in their first European summer campaign together.

In the silver fleet Chris Nicholson and Ben Austin finished the regatta seventh, ahead of David O'Conner and Robert Bell in 10th and Steven Thomas and Kyle Langford in 16th.

Brothers Clint and Ty Marshall finished fifth in the bronze fleet, with Sean O'Rourke and Harry Bethwaite 15th and Robert Gibbs and James Garnaut 17th.

23 year old Outteridge and 21 year old Jensen grew up sailing together on Australia's largest salt water lake, Lake Macquarie. (Outteridge lives at Wangi Wangi and Jensen just across the bay at Fishing Point)

They won the Flying 11 Nationals as juniors, then the Youth Worlds 420 in Poland. Outteridge won a total of three Gold medals at the Youth Worlds.

With Jensen in final year of his schooling, Outteridge began sailing with Ben Austin and together they won the 2008 49er World Championship at Sail Melbourne in January 2008. At the Beijing Olympics. They went into the Olympic medal race in third place, were leading on track for Gold Medal, but capsized in the last 100 metres to finish fifth.

With Jensen now able to give sailing his full time focus, the two mates have begun campaigning together again with this winning result.

No rest for the winning duo, they have already headed for their next regatta.

Today Monday is the first day of the 29er Worlds; Outteridge will be sailing with Lauren Jeffries, his girlfriend, while Jensen will be sailing with Haylee Outteridge, Nathan's 18 year old sister.

The 29ers finish on Sunday, then home to Australia for four days, then off to Moths Worlds in USA, at the famous Gorge. Outteridge in his first Moth regatta won the Australian titles in January 2009 and with foiling Moth guru and multiple World Champion Rohan Veal coaching him, he will be a chance to win the World titles, while he is on the roll.

Skandia Geelong Week 2009, Melbourne (VIC) - 23/01/09 -MOTH CLASS - Olympic sailor Nathan Outteridge - Andrea Francolini / Skandia Click Here to view large photo

Scores take intoaccount 2 discards


								qualifying series			final series								medal race
pl	No Sailno	Name	Scores	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
1	AUS 1	Nathan Outteridge, Iain Jensen World Champions 2009	59	2	2	10	4	2	1	3	5	8	2	1	4	7	4	6	4	8	4
2	GBR 1082	John Pink, Rick Peacock	74	4	6	2	5	1	2	2	3	2	17	5	1	16	5	9	8	3	6
3	ITA 4	Pietro Sibello, Gianfranco Sibello	74	7	4	1	2	20	1	4	2	1	8	8	2	6	6	14	1	7	14
4	GBR 2	Stevie Morrison, Ben Rhodes	77	1	1	7	3	1	3	1	4	8	1	15	20	8	3	3	15	1	10
5	AUT 10	Nico Delle Karth, Nikolaus Leopold Resch	80	3	1	4	1	6	2	4	4	6	16	12	7	1	2	1	21	4	12
6	GBR 1097	Chris Draper, Peter Greenhalgh	90	2	10	6	6	3	7	1	1	10	4	14	12	2	7	15	2	5	8
7	DEN 982	Peter Hansen, Soren Hansen	103	3	3	9	5	1	10	4	8	9	11	7	8	9	17	2	12	10	2
8	FRA 1070	Manu Dyen, Christidis Stephane	103,2	4	7	4	3	17	3	18	3	1	13	2	6	10	1	rdg	7	9	16
9	GBR 9	Paul Campbell-James, Mark Asquith	118	2	5	2	2	3	1	6	6	21	23	4	24	3	9	17	5	12	18
10	ESP 7	Iker Martinez de Lizarduy, Xavier Fernandez	119	15	15	4	1	3	4	3	1	2	7	9	13	rdg	13	8	14	6	20