Sally Barkow Takes Carlos Aguilar Match Race Title

The USA’s Sally Barkow played the ‘comeback kid’ by defeating the USA’s Dave Perry 3-0 in the Finals at the 5th Carlos Aguilar Match Race (CAMR), presented by Ulysse Nardin/Trident Jewels & Time.

Barkow, who has raced this regatta four times, took second last year after a narrow defeat by Finland’s Staphan Lindberg. The sorrow of that defeat made this year’s win for Barkow and her crew – Annie Lush, Alana O’Reilly, Erik Champaign and Maggie Shea – all the sweeter.

“We worked hard as a team in these last few days and it paid off,” says Barkow, who is ranked sixth in the Women’s and 31st in the Open match race ranking’s divisions as of 5 December 2012. Barkow was awarded a distinctive Ulysse Nardin precision timepiece for her win.

A rain squall blowing across the Charlotte Amalie harbor just minutes before the start of the Finals left light and shifty conditions in its wake. This didn’t deter Barkow who handily won the first two matches against Perry.

In what proved the final match of the Finals, Barkow lead at the start and stretched her advantage to eight boat lengths by the windward mark. She lengthened her frontrunner position into a commanding 10 to 12 boat lengths by the finish even though her team battled through a kink in the spinnaker that cost them a few seconds in boat speed in the last downwind run.

“It was so shifty,” says Barkow. “It was easy to get it either so right or so wrong.”

This match-up of teams in the Finals was an interesting one as Perry has served as Barkow’s match racing coach.

“For me it was a win-win,” says Perry of his team’s second place finish and his student’s first. “Sally’s team is really good and they have evolved their game well. I was impatient. I had some advantages and gave them away. This either put me behind or put me further behind and Sally took advantage of that.”

Two past America’s Cup skippers went head-to-head in the Petite Finals. Ultimately, the USVI’s Peter Holmberg won 2-1 over the USA’s Dave Dellenbaugh. Thus, Holmberg finished third and Dellenbaugh fourth in the final standings. Holmberg won this event in 2009.

In other team scores, Brazil’s Henrique Haddad finished 5th, the USA’s Christopher Poole 6th, the USA’s Stephanie Roble 7th, the USVI’s Tyler Rice 8th, Denmark’s Lotte Meldgaard Peterson 9th, Brazil’s Renata Decnop 10th and Germany’s Sven-Eric Horsch 11th.

This four-day ISAF Grade 2 match race was sailed in Inter-Club (IC)-24s. Forty-nine flights or 135 races were sailed in total.

Race results are available on the official event website.

Final Results

1. Sally Barkow, USA
2. Dave Perry, USA
3. Peter Holmberg, ISV
4. Dave Dellenbaugh, USA
5. Henrique Haddad, BRA
6. Christopher Poole, USA
7. Stephanie Robles, USA
8. Tyler Rice, ISV
9. Lotte Meldgaard Pedersen, DEN
10. Renata Decnop, BRA
11. Sven-Eric Horsch, GER

Highlights from the final day of ISAF Sailing World Cup Melbourne

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