Three Indian teams make semis in ISS Mumbai International Match Race

Commander Mahesh's team crewed by Rajesh Dhulaji, Neeraj Sharma and P S Rao, managed to sail through every single match unfazed right through till the semi-finals. The other three teams to make it to the semi-finals which are being held tomorrow morning are the French, led by skipper Francois Morvan and crewed by Rodrigue Cabaz, Nicolas Dore and Jeremie Raymond; Skipper Farokh Tarapore's team crewed by Balraj Yadav, Atool Sinha and S S Yadav; and Skipper Nitin Mongia's team crewed by Yuvraj Singh, Samal Pradhan, G Randhawa. With the three teams coming in for a tie with 73 per cent wins each, it was decided that Morvan's team is currently ranked at second, Tarapore's team at third and Mongia's team ranked fourth for the semis. However, the real stars of the day were skipper Mati Sepp's team from Estonia. But their disappointed skipper felt that the strange wind conditions that needed getting used to is what lost him the Gold this year. ''We are professional fleet and match racers, we were just getting to adapt to the conditions. By tomorrow there would have been no one here that we would not have beaten,'' Sepp said. A case in point is their brilliant delay tactic, which they used against the Bahrain team led by skipper Ebrahim Abdullah.

Through the event, the Estonians were the only team who were able to carry out a penalty and win the same race, during such a closely fought race. The Estonian team crewed by Marek Mesi, Ago Rebow and Priff Kullacy were given a penalty by the jury where they had to spin their boat once in a complete circle; this could have lost them their neck-to-neck race against Bahrain. But remarkably, while blocking the Bahrain team from overtaking, the Estonians carried out their penalty right at the end to win the match.

-- (UNI) -- 04SPB2.xml

Viewer's Comment

Comments Not Available

More Stories