8:39 PM Mon 26 Apr 2010 GMT
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'Lucy MacGregor (GBR) Womens Match Racing - 2010 SOF Hyeres'
Guillaume Durand
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Olympic windsurfing bronze medallist Bryony Shaw was the best British performance on another testing day of racing at the French Olympic Sailing Week in Hyeres on Monday (26 April).
Light wind conditions continued to dominate the southern French venue, with speeds typically four to five knots across the courses, but Shaw managed to pick up a race win and a second to top the leaderboard in the women's RS:X fleet after day two at this fourth leg of the ISAF Sailing World Cup series.
Shaw, 26, was involved in a tough battle with Spanish training partner Marina Alabau around the race track. The Spaniard crossed the finish line ahead of the Skandia Team GBR sailor in both races, but was disqualified from the second race for having crossed the start line early, which handed the victory and the yellow leaders' jersey to Shaw.
"It was good to get racing today," Shaw explained. "The wind was so fickle we had a number of general recalls and there was a lot of waiting around, but we did get in a couple of fair races, even if they were a hellish pump-off in such light winds!"
"I had some good battles with Marina, I was right on her the whole time and we were fronting up the fleet. It was hard work today, both physical and tactical, but it's great to be up there."
RS:X men's World Champion Nick Dempsey also saw a solid start to his regatta, with two third places from his two races seeing him in third overall, while Olympic World and European Champion Paul Goodison picked up a third in the only race of the day for the Laser class to sit him in fourth place overall after two races.
Paul Brotherton and Mark Asquith were also quick out of the blocks in the 49er event - they're currently top British boat with three-four from their two yellow fleet races.
"We were all fired up and nowhere to go yesterday," Brotherton explained, "so it was good to get out on the water today and with it being light and fluffy like it was, our priority was to not be too adventurous and just try and sail with the other boats, tack when they did."
"We're not slow in those conditions so we tried to use that to get us a couple of decent results which is what happened. We got a couple of breaks as well as it happened, so we had a good day but even it hadn't have gone our way it still would've been an OK day which is all you can really aim for when it's like that."
Women's match racers Lucy Macgregor, Annie Lush and Ally Martin completed their opening round robin matches on Monday, losing just one match to the French team helmed by Anne Claire Le Berre to finish second in their group and advance to the gold group round robin starting on Tuesday.
Ed Wright picked up a fourth in the Finn event to get his regatta underway, while Helena Lucas is in equal first place in the 2.4metre Paralympic event, with Megan Pascoe in third.
There were also promising signs from Charlotte Dobson in the Laser Radial fleet, who picked up a race win in her second race of the day to sit in sixth overall, and John Gimson and Ed Greig in the Star class, who move into second place behind Croatia's Mate Arapov and Ante Sitic with the help of a race win today.
Elsewhere, Sarah Ayton and Saskia Clark started their regatta with 13th in the 470 women's event, while Skandia Team GBR's top men's 470 crews and the Paralympic Sonar trio of John Robertson, Hannah Stodel and Steve Thomas struggled in the light and shifty conditions.
Racing at the French Olympic Sailing Week is set to resume on Tuesday 27 April, with the final medal races scheduled for Friday 30 April.
For more information, visit:
www.skandiateamgbr.com
by RYA
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