2002 SNIPE WESTERN HEMISPHERE AND
ORIENT CHAMPIONSHIP
Sept. 24-28 / Alamitos Bay Yacht Club, Long Beach,
Calif.
Sept. 28, 2002 For Immediate Release
DIAZ FORCES THE ISSUE, WINS SNIPE WESTERNS IN FINAL
RACE
 |
| Augie Diaz of Miami (left) leaves
Brazil's Alexandre Paradeda blocked behind the committee
boat as the final decisive race gets under way. Photo
by Rich Roberts |
LONG BEACH, Calif.---A final day with
more twists and turns than an Agatha Christie mystery led
Americans Augie Diaz and crew Jon Rogers to a dramatic victory
over Brazil's world champions Alexandre Paradeda and Flavio
Fernandes in the 2002 Snipe Western Hemisphere and Orient
Championship Saturday.
Amid wild wind shifts and intermittent
rain squalls that ultimately sucked the breeze right out of
the race course, Diaz couldn't beat Paradeda in the last race
but pounded him hard enough at the start to send him off to
a seventh-place finish when the Brazilian needed to finish
no worse than fourth to win the title. Final points: Diaz
15, Paradeda 17.25.
"This is huge," said Diaz,
48, who won the same championship in Colombia in 1972. "I'm
very surprised and very happy. I'm very fortunate to have
won."
Diaz, a Cuban-born Miami resident employed
in his family's medical supply business, and Rogers, the 35-year-old
director of the Coronado Yacht Club's junior program in California,
were a solid, if unlikely, match.
 |
| Augie Diaz (left) of Miami and
crew Jon Rogers of Coronado are happy sailors after coming
from behind on the last day to win the Snipe Western Hemisphere
and Orient Championship. Photo by Rich Roberts |
"Even though this was the first
time we'd sailed together, we meshed perfectly," Diaz
said. "We had very good starts and very good speed. What
we didn't have was the killer instinct. We had position to
win a few times but couldn't prevail."
Indeed, they never won a race, while
Paradeda won three and Pimentel won two and San Diego's Randy
Lake, with crew Piet Van Os, won the only two Brazilians didn't
win---the first and the last, both in the lightest wind of
the week.
"I've got the start and finish
down," Lake said. "I just have to work on the middle
part."
The key was in the throwouts. The 25
competitors from seven nations were allowed to discard their
worst scores after the sixth of seven races, which was the
first of two races Saturday. With a half-dozen container freighters
anchored near the race course, unable to unload because of
a U.S. West Coast labor dispute, the race committee set an
Olympic-style course (triangle lap followed by a windward-leeward
lap) inshore to the south near the beach and into the teeth
of an uncommon southeast breeze of 11-12 knots.
 |
| Chile's Jorge Gonzalez and crew
Tomas Depolo were caught in close quarters Saturday. Photo
by Rich Roberts |
Paradeda got whipsawed by a 25-degree
shift on the second upwind leg and finished 13th as Diaz sailed
second to Paradeda's 63-year-old countryman, Ivan Pimentel.
Paradeda could discard the 13, but then
Diaz, with no finish worse than third all week and no one
else to worry about, could afford to waste the last race and
sail with one mission in mind: get in his rival's face like
a used car salesman with bad breath. With the wind down to
only 4 or 5 knots, Diaz initiated his own match race and pinned
Paradeda outside the committee boat, then broke away with
a three-boat length lead at the start.
Diaz could have kept Paradeda stuck
there indefinitely but explained, "I didn't think it
would be good sportsmanship just to sit there on him. I'd
already won the start from him."
 |
| Augie Diaz (center)
leads San Diego's Bryan Lake and crew Graham Biehl (right)
and Uruguay's Santiago Silviera and crew Nicolas Shaban
toward the reach mark in the next-to-last race. Photo
by Rich Roberts |
Soon, however, he may have regretted
it. Paradeda caught up and forced Diaz to tack to the right
side of the course for clear air. When the wind went left,
Diaz was hung out to d
ry as Paradeda clawed his way back into
contention.
"It was out of my control,"
Diaz said. All he could do was keep sailing and hope that
Lake, with a comfortable lead, would finish within the two-hour
time limit---otherwise, the final scores would revert to six
races---or that Paradeda would finish no better than fifth.
Diaz won on both counts. Although the
wind fell to 2 and 3 knots at times, Lake finished the shortened
five-mile course with 4 minutes 45 seconds to spare, and Paradeda
had come back only to fifth, unable to catch San Diego's George
Szabo and Brian Janney, before a final, fatal shift dropped
him to seventh in the last few hundred yards.
 |
| Brazil's world champions Alexandre
Paradeda and crew Flavio Fernandes work desperately to
save their fading hopes in dying breeze. Photo by Rich
Roberts |
Overall, two countries dominated. Americans
Diaz/Rogers, Szabo/Janney, Lake/Os and Henry Filter/Lisa Griffith
of Annapolis finished first, fourth, fifth and 10th, respectively,
while Brazilians Paradeda/Fernandes, Marcos Mascarenhas/Pedro
Caldas and Pimentel/Pedro Tinoco were second, third and seventh.
There were no protests lodged in the
entire regatta.
Top finishers (7 races, one throwout):
1. Augie Diaz/Jon Rogers, Miami, Fla.,
3-3-3-2-2-2-(9), 15 points. 2. Alexandre Paradeda/Flavio Fernandes,
Brazil, 2-1-1-1-6-(13)-7, 17.25. 3. Marcos Mascarenhas/Pedro
Caldas, Brazil, 5-(13)-7-7-4-5-2, 30. 4. George Szabo/Brian
Janney, San Diego, 8-11-5-4-(22)-4-3, 35. 5. Randy Lake/Piet
Van Os, San Diego, 1-2-6-12-(17)-14-1, 35.5. 6. Santiago Silviera/Nicolas
Shaban, Uruguay, 6-(22)-8-6-3-6-8, 37. 7. Ivan Pimentel/Pedro
Tinoco, Brazil, 14-10-2-16-1-1-(DNF), 43.5. 8. Javier Ocariz/Nicolas
Ocariz, Argentina, 4-6-(21)-14-5-12-5, 46. 9. Shigeru Matsuzaki/Toshio
Matsuzaki, Japan, 11-8-(12.5)-11-10-7-4, 51. 10. Henry Filter/Lisa
Griffith, Annapolis, 17-9-4-5-14-3-(18), 52.
Complete results, photos and other information
are available at www.abyc.org. High-resolution photos suitable
for print reproduction are available upon request.
CHAIRMAN
Gordon Brown
(562) 434-9955
or browgrdn@aol.com
PUBLICITY
Rich Roberts
(310) 835-2526
richsail@earthlink.net
