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Celia Willison and her Edge Women's Match team had planned a busy year in 2020 but this weekend's 2020 NZ Women’s Match Racing Championships will be their first match racing event since February.
That lack of activity due to Covid-19, and the fact they are defending champions, sees the team highly motivated to add to the maiden national title they won last year when they beat Californian Allison Blecher in the final.
Willison is currently ninth in the women's world match racing rankings, and was as high as six at the start of the year, and will be the favourite when the national championships get under way at the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron on Friday.
A handful of teams from the US and Australia typically compete in this event but border restrictions mean this year's event will be an all-Kiwi affair with seven teams competing.
“The girls and I are super-keen to get out there and race against what is a great lineup," Willison said. "We haven’t had a match racing regatta since February so it’s pretty exciting to be able to go match racing again.
"We really want to do well and it would be awesome to win this event again, but we know we will have our work cut out for us this weekend against some really good female sailors.”
The biggest competition could come from Megan Thomson and her 2.0 Women’s Match Racing Team.
Thomson has come a long way since her seventh-place finish at this event in 2019, which is shown by some solid results that has seen her jump to a career-high 22 as well as her recent selection in the RNZYS Youth America’s Cup team.
Thomson and her team have been trainings as often as they can and should be very competitive this weekend.
Samantha Norman and Claudia Pierce are both skippering teams and will be looking to turn back the clock when they take on the up-and-coming generation at this regatta.
Both are graduates of the RNZYS Mastercard Youth Training Programme but haven’t been involved in any match racing for some time, however, both are very experienced. Norman and Pierce will no doubt be hoping they can show the new kids on the block how it’s done.
Youngsters Maeve White and Holly McNeil will be making their NZ Women’s Match Racing Championship debuts and both will be skippering teams made up entirely of Mastercard YTP sailors, a good reflection of the strength and number of young female sailors coming through the programme.
The final team is skippered by Ella Wilcox from Christchurch who is the only South Island representative skipper competing.
Racing will include a double round robin on Friday and Saturday, followed by semifinals and finals on Sunday. Racing will get underway at 10am each day on the water right outside the RNZYS and spectators are welcome at the club or on the water.
The winning team will receive the Leith Mossman Memorial Trophy which was donated by the NZ Women’s Yachting Trust in 2000 in memory of an avid female sailor, Leith Mossman, who lost her battle with breast cancer in 1998.
- Pic: Celia Willison and her team are back to defend the title they won last year. Photo: Andrew Delves / RNZYS.
