Quarter finallists decided

Women's Racing Racing in full flow at the multi-class European Championships in Helsinki, Finland

Round robin stage of Women's Match Racing was completed on Friday at the multiple European Championships in Helsinki, Finland.

Ekaterina Skudina's team (RUS) advanced to the quarterfinal's with the best record, 9 wins out of 11 matches. Anne-Claire Le Berre's team (FRA) also won 9, losing only to Skudina and China's Wang Ru.

Mandi Mulder of The Netherlands and Rita Goncalves of Portugal shared the third spot. Both teams won 8 starts out of 11.

Among the qualifiers was local Silja Lehtinen (FIN) alongside her team, Silja Kanerva and Mikael Wulff. They grabbed the eighth spot with a win-loss record of 4-7.

In the afternoon the weather in Helsinki became very muggy and humid. After flight 21 the racing was stopped for half an hour. When the break was over, the match racers were able to finish their round robin series smoothly in a reasonable breeze with no rainfall.

Australia's Olivia Price commented: “We finished the round robin strongly with wins against Wang of China and Pomerants of Estonia which left us with six wins and five losses. This placed us sixth overall, ahead of the highly ranked, and local favourites, the Finish team skippered by Silja Lehtinen.

“The format for the quarter finals is slightly different for this regatta as the higher placed boats choose their opposition,” she said. “Dutch sailor Mandy Mulder placed third in the round robin and chose to sail against us, even though we had won against her the day before.

“We got through two races of the quarter-finals today, which were both full of action. We received a penalty in the pre-start in the first race, but managed to win the start and maintain the lead until the last run. We tried to wash off our penalty but got caught out in a slow-boat port starboard incident, resulting in another penalty for us.”

The quarter-finals at Hernesaari start today with four flights and continue on Saturday. The pairings are as follow:

Silja Lehtinen (FIN) vs. Tamara Echegoyen (ESP)
Olivia Price (AUS) vs. Mandi Mulder (NED)
Rita Goncalves (POR) vs. Ekaterina Skudina (RUS)
Silvia Roca Mata (ESP) vs. Anne-Claire Le Berre (FRA)

After the four sailed flights in quarter-finals, Lehtinen and Echegoyen have won one race each and Mulder, Skudina and Le Berre two races. Women’s Match Racing will continue on Saturday at 10 o’clock local time. With three wins in quarter-finals, teams are continuing to the next stage.

On Saturday Star class racing starts at Open Europeans 2011.