O’Leary and Burrows finish a strong 4th in the Star Class at Medemblik

The penultimate day of the Delta Lloyd Regatta, which included the Medal Race for the International Star Class, was a long sailing day with a lot of delays and late racing. With wind quickly increasing to 28 knots and steep waves causing casualties, only one race was sailed in the Laser, 470 Men and Star.

The Stars suffered from the fresh breeze and steep waves and the last downwind leg saw four masts snapped in Race 7 of the series.   Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson still managed to sail across the finish with a broken mast, holding the sail at arm length in the air. Surfing the wave of success, Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada (BRA) took another bullet and discarded a 5th.  They went into the medal race tonight with a 11 points lead on Olympic champions Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson (GBR) who could not sail the race owing to the loss of their mast in Race 7.

Peter O’ Leary and David Burrows made it into the top ten finalists for the Medal Race as expected and finished the regatta in 4th position overall and just missing the bronze medal, an outstanding performance in this galaxy of world level Star sailors.  This result means the duo have now won the first in the series of the Star Class trials for the Irish Olympic team finishing ahead of the Dublin team of Maxwell Treacy and Anthony Shanks who took 12th position overall.