Fuente info Scuttlebutt europe
Two New Teams and a New Boat Join the RC44 Tour In Austria
At the 2011 RC44 Championship Tour opener in San Diego in March, the Paul Cayard, Bob Little combination onboard Katusha (RUS) claimed a convincing first round victory in the 2011 RC44 Championship Tour, now with two new teams bolstering the entries to 13, the Tour moves to Austria.
This is the fourth successive year the RC44 Tour has visited Gmunden on Lake Traunsee, with last year's RC44 Austria Cup attracting over 20,000 spectators. This year will also see live tracking and onboard streaming from three cameras on the race course and one onboard AEZ RC44 Sailing Team from 11th - 15th May.
The home team in Austria comes courtesy of the Rene Mangold-owned AEZ RC 44 Sailing Team. Although made up largely of amateur sailors, AEZ tactician is former Soling European champion Christian Binder, who represented Austria in the 470 class at the 1988 and 1992 Olympics. Portugal's Nuno Barreto, a veteran of three Olympics, a 1996 470 Games bronze medalist and a member of the Desafío Español 2007 America's Cup crew, joins the AEZ team for the 2011 season. They will be looking to improve on their ninth place in San Diego.
Another team looking to move up the overall standings is David Murphy's Ironbound (USA). In San Diego the team appeared consistently inconsistent, three race wins should have seen them in the top half of the leader-board, but instead they finished seventh. The team has made some changes ahead of Austria that will see Brad Butterworth coaching, Simon Daubney trimming and Peter Evans taking the tacticians role.
Reigning Laser World Champion, Tom Slingsby (AUS) steps onboard the Dutch entry No Way Back as their tactician and match racing helm. Two new teams make their debut, Vladimir Prosikhin's Russian Team Nika and from France Mr Hugues Lepic's Aleph Sailing Team. Chris Bake launched and christened his new Team Aqua on Lake Traunsee last week and is looking forward to swapping the oldest boat in the fleet for the newest.
Racing proper starts on 11th May with a day of match racing followed by four days of fleet racing. Watch the action live each day from 11.30 CET on www.rc44.com/tracking
www.rc44.com
