Results / Sprint Championships Rutland SC - 11/04/2015

Pie-Eaters Prosper at a Feisty 300 Sprint Championships at Rutland

Photos: Luke Pepper

Not since the great John Regis, have robustly framed athletes and sprinting been successfully combined in one sentence - but with the feisty forecast for the annual Sprint Championships at Rutland, twenty 300's set forth with the larger "athletes" looking forward to some cracking racing.

Special mention has to go to the Prestwick duo, Mark and Alistair who travelled the furthest, but bringing their own 'Anemoi - Greek God of Wind' - aka commodore Tracy - was a possibly a step too far.

Saturday dawned and the fleet set off to the far east of the lake in a base 20 knot NW'er for the first set of 6 races. As ever the slick Rutland Water SC organisation had split the fleet into 4 flights enabling everybody to race each other and set the usual testing windward leeward course.

It was clear from the on-set that the conditions were going to be tricky with a few casualties on the way to the start, it may be April already but the water at 4 deg C was plenty cold enough. As ever the upwinds, whilst hard work were always going to be the pre-curser to the downwind and gybe mark mayhem that followed and at times a more cautionary approach paid big dividends.

After the first rotation the key beneficiaries were Rich le Mare and Pete Ellis, racing in the same flight and sharing a clutch of 1st & 2nds, Pete benefitting from a mistake by Rich on a particularly slippery piece of water a mere 150m from the finish of Race 3 to snatch a one point lead - could that of been a costly error?

Everybody had at least one swim, some were being exceedingly greedy and having more than their fair share of capsizes and with half the fleet already back in the hutch, the PRO made the decision to abandon the rest of the days racing for the 300's only.

With the Sunday Forecast looking daunting, the fleet over did the evening entertainment at the Wheatsheaf. The returning Mr & Mrs Mike Bees held court on their thrones and newbie Declan Clamp acted as court jester.

A somewhat jaded fleet arrived on Sunday to only 10-15 knots, but as predicted the wind rose to a base 23 knots gusting well into the 30's the PRO after consultation with all the fleets abandoned racing for the day.

So after only 3 races on Saturday Pete (chick & mushroom) Ellis was confirmed as Sprints Champion, with Rich (steak & ale) le Mare 1 point behind rueing that capsize in R3, Steve (Cornish pastie) Bolland taking 3rd and Timbo & Luke just need to eat more pies...

The Grand Prix series continues on 9/10 May with the inaugural slalom championships at Bristol Corinthian.

Many thanks to the team at Rutland, for your hard work in trying conditions, always tweaking the format and seeking feedback from the competitors - we'll be back in 2016.