2 French skippers in the semis of Marseille International Match Race

[Source: Marseille International Match Race] When the teams started to prepare their boats this morning, the wind gauge announced less than 5 knots...

But the race committee was optimistic and confident, and committed to pushing ahead with the competition, so they asked the skippers to leave the port of the Pointe Rouge....

The fleet of J80s was on the water at around 10 am, but the wind wasn't. The umpires and two crews - Richard and Cian – came back to the club for lunch and wait on dry land!

As usual, the wind came back around 1 o'clock and with between 10 and 15 knots the competition could start again.

Great conditions for match racing... 5 flights were on the program today and the tickets for the semi-finals required 3 matches.

Quarter finals of the Marseille International Match Race. Marseille, 14 March 2008. Photo copyright Gilles Martin-Raget

They said

Sébastien Col, World n° 4 , semi finalist
Sébastien Col has recently joined the Yachting Club de la Pointe Rouge,MIMR organizing club. "It's been a fairly hard day for us, but we've managed to qualify for the semi-finals and we'll do better tomorrow. The sailing conditions this afternoon were really good, but after a long wait this morning on the water
we found it hard to get back into the competition.

Arbuzov's team sailed really well, but we missed some opportunities, perhaps we concentrated on our speed too much. Tomorrow we'll be racing against a serious competitor! Cian is awesome in this event, we are good enough to beat him ... we'll see tomorrow."

Evgeny Neugodnikov, World N° 7 (MIMR semi-finalist in 2007)
"The MIMR is a great event. We knew the French sail whatever the weather. We are happy to have got through the round robin despite the extreme sailing conditions. The boats were perfectly prepared. We had to sail against the Italian Cian who is really on form this week. He managed to anticipate our manoeuvres each time, leaving us with little freedom."

Quarter finals of the Marseille International Match Race. Marseille, 14 March 2008. Photo copyright Gilles Martin-Raget

Friday's Results
Presti (FRA) 1/ Richard (FRA) 3
Mirsky 1 (AUS) / Ebler (DEN) 3
Arbuzov 2 (RUS) / Col (FRA) 3
Neugodnikov (RUS) 0 / Cian (ITA) 3