Swedish
Match Tour - Pace To Meet Gilmour For ACI Cup
Team
France and Pizza-La Sailing Team are victorious
in semifinals
SPLIT,
Croatia — Bertrand Pacé and Team
France will meet Peter Gilmour and the Pizza-La
Sailing Team tomorrow in the finals of the ACI
HTmobile Cup, the sixth event on the Swedish Match
Tour 2003-’04.
 |
Jes
Gram-Hansen (R) holds up the Y flag looking
in vain for a penalty against Bertrand Pace
during their semifinal match at the ACI
HTmobile Cup. Photo © Bob Grieser/Outside
Images
|
Pacé
defeated Team Denmark’s Jes Gram-Hansen
3-0 in one semifinal match, while Gilmour beat
Sweden’s Magnus Holmberg and the SeaLife
Rangers crew, 3-1, in the other semifinal contest.
“Tomorrow
is sure to be exciting,” said Pacé
in preview of the final. “Gilmour is very
tough. I think there’ll be a lot of Y flags
flying.”
Gilmour,
the overall leader of the Swedish Match Tour Championship
Leaderboard, is a four-time champion of the ACI
Cup, having won in 1993, ’94, ’95
and ’97.
Pacé,
winner of the inaugural Swedish Match Tour in
2000, has never won the event.
“Bertrand
hasn’t been doing a lot of match-racing
this year,” Gilmour said. “He’s
the up and coming new boy while we’re the
old sages.”
Today’s
events at the 18th annual ACI Cup were slow to
start. A third consecutive windless morning meant
the race committee issued another shoreside postponement
Today,
however, the lack of wind meant the cancellation
of the final seven flights of the round robin,
and the scores for Flights 1-4 and 12-15 had to
be recalculated. But that had little consequence
on the four teams that advanced to the semifinals.
“I
think it was a good move on the part of the race
committee to cancel the remaining flights rather
than try to get them in,” said Gilmour.
“I worked it out where we would’ve
needed to sail four flights to potentially change
the top four.”
Pacé
won three straight against Gram-Hansen in the
semifinals, but they were hardly walkover wins.
Team Denmark did a great job in the pre-starts,
but Pacé was too fast on the racecourse.
“I’m
a little disappointed,” said Gram-Hansen,
“but we lost to a better team today. I still
feel we sailed well all week. We were getting
the starts we wanted today, but they just didn’t
work out on the racecourse.”
A
key moment in the match came in the second flight.
Approaching the windward mark on port tack, both
crews were shy of the layline, and Pacé,
to windward, rode Gram-Hansen past the mark. Gram-Hansen
tried luffing, but he was too far away from the
mark to make it work.
He
wound up getting a penalty for contact with Pacé
after passing through head-to-wind, and it was
a red-flag penalty which meant he had to perform
his 270-degree turn after rounding the windward
mark.
“I
wasn’t obliged to give him room in that
situation,” Pacé said. “He
was outside of me.”
“We
were about 3 or 4 meters shy of the windward mark,”
Gram-Hansen said.
A
penalty also seemed to hold the key in the Gilmour-Holmberg
semifinal.
With
the score tied 1-1, Holmberg got a penalty on
Gilmour in the pre-start of their third match,
when Gilmour’s boat touched Holmberg’s
while the two were drifting backwards after luffing
head-to-wind.
Gilmour,
however, was able to gain the lead on the beat
and led Holmberg by less than two boatlengths
at the first windward mark. Holmberg closed on
the first run and rounded the leeward mark on
Gilmour’s transom.
Holmberg
was first to tack to port, and Gilmour covered
tightly. Then Holmberg tried luffing Gilmour,
who was still carrying a penalty.
Holmberg
luffed Gilmour head-to-wind, trying to get the
Aussie to tack away.
When
the umps green-flagged the incident, Holmberg
luffed a little harder but went past head-to-wind
and there was contact. The umpires penalized Holmberg,
which canceled out Gilmour’s penalty.
It
was an odd move on Holmberg’s part, since
he had a penalty against Gilmour and seemingly
just had to stay close and hope he could pass
when Gilmour did his 270-degree turn.
Holmberg
explained it differently.
“I
thought he might ride me out past the starboard
layline, tack and then extend away to the windward
mark,” Holmberg said. “I thought I
had an opportunity to force him to tack away.
Then I could continue on port and gain the starboard
advantage.
“I
disagree with the penalty,” he continued.
“I thought he should tack away.”
Tomorrow’s
final is scheduled as a best-of-five series (first
to 3 points).
For
a detailed report on today’s semifinal matches,
results by flight and the upcoming schedule, please
visit www.SwedishMatchTour.com.
Semifinal
Results
Bertrand
Pace/FRA, Team France d. Jes Gram-Hansen/DEN,
Team Denmark 3-0
Peter
Gilmour/AUS, Pizza-La Sailing Team d. Magnus Holmberg/SWE,
SeaLife Rangers 3-1
Final
ACI HTmobile Cup Round Robin Standings
1.
Bertrand Pacé/FRA, Team France, 8.5 points
(11-2)
Crew
Benoit Briand, Tanguy Caidou, Fabrice Levet, Romain
Troublé
2.
Jes Gram-Hansen/DEN, Team Denmark, 8 points (10-3)
Crew
Michael Arnhild, Christian Kamp, Rasmus Kostner,
Chresten Plinius
3.
Magnus Holmberg/SWE, SeaLife Rangers, 7 points
(10-4)
Crew
Peter Anderson, Martin Krite, Lars Linger, Stefan
Rahm
4.
Peter Gilmour/AUS, Pizza-La Sailing Team, 7 points
(10-4)
Crew
Rod Dawson, Mike Mottl, Kazuhiko Sofuku, Yasuhiro
Yaji
5.
Gavin Brady/NZL, BMW Oracle Racing, 6.5 points
(9-5)
Crew
John Kostecki, Craig Monk, Robbie Naismith, Brad
Webb
6.
Mathieu Richard/FRA, 5 points (7-6)
Crew
Greg Evrard, Olivier Herledant, Alexis Ponsot
Pierre, Yannick Simon
7.
Mattias Rahm/SWE, Team Stena Bulk, 4.5 points
(5-8)
Crew
Johan Barne, Claes Dahlberg, Pontus Meijer, Henrik
Valderyd
8.
Kelvin Harrap/NZL, Team New Zealand, 4 points
(5-9)
Crew
Andy Hemmings, Jeremy Lomas, Grant Lorentz, Chris
Ward
9.
Staffan Lindberg/SWE, 2 points (3-11)
Crew
Johan Karlsson, Daniel Mattsson, Johan Mossberg,
Daniel Wallberg
10.
Mate Arapov/CRO, 1.5 points (3-11)
Crew
Ivan Bulaja, Luka Radelic Ognjen Uljevic, Stjepan
Vitaljic
11.
Frano Brate/CRO, 1 point (2-12)
Crew
Boris Bakotic, Zvonko Jelacic, Denis Stanojevic,
Mirko Ukas
For
more information on the Swedish Match Tour, its
skippers and events please visit www.SwedishMatchTour.com.
