Ireland's team at the World University Match Racing Championships suffered a major setback yesterday, with one of their crew members injured in race one. Richie Bruton, pitman for the Irish team, took a serious blow to his knee in the first race of seven yesterday, and had to be removed from the boat for treatment.
Shore manager Dee O'Rourke, who worked with the Delta Lloyd Volvo Ocean Race team, stepped onto the boat for the remaining races, having to get up to speed on the boat in a day of racing in up to 22 knots. O'Rourke performed admirably, but the team suffered a number of losses on the water in extremely close racing, and may still have to sail a playoff for a quarter-final slot.
Team captain Marty O'Leary described the racing yesterday:
"Next two races were against Australia womens' team and Singapore, we lost both these by the smallest of margins. We were pretty happy to be still able to put up a fight given the circumstances and it's very hard for both the super sub who had to step in half way through a world championship and be expected to be up to speed and in sync with the rest of the team,
"In the next two races against Austrailia mens and Greece, we finally started to gel together and had two great wins where we controlled the whole race from start to finish."
"The final race was against France, and we wont he pre-start and lead at windward mark, but another gybing battle was on the cards, (these battles are literally killing us slowly!!!).
"We rounded the leeward mark neck and neck, and alot of tacks followed, far too many to count. France just got their nose ahead by the finish."
"Racing was again on until 7pm, we are the first team finished the round robin, we are on seven wins out of 12.
"The few loses today really hurt us, at this stage it is pretty close weather this is enough to bring us into the top six, but most likely into the top eight anyway, the other teams still have a few races to finish out the round robin, but it's out of our hands now."
Results are HERE (pdf download) and the round robin stages will be finished today.
