At each major event, I am always amazed (or amused or annoyed), to read comments with a flood of superlatives on the races, competitors, their sportsmanship … A torrent of “best ever seen“, “wonderful“, “best skippers” and even “fantastic“… It is certainly sometimes justified, there are accents of sincerity, perhaps a certain “savoir-vivre” in some cultures, but let’s be honest, some messages are purely demagogic, or inspired by Couéism. Being too often repeated, the words lose their meaning. But you know what? Last Saturday, those words had a lot of sense!
2 crashes will prevent LDeWell to reach Match Race
Joly leading in group1 will join finals.
2010 January 30th: I was fortunate to attend some races of the ACA-SL Cup (5 groups of 8 to be precise). I saw some very good races, some a little worse … I’d dare to say, that the competition was a usual mix of joy and disappointment, some great races and others a little less great. SL sometimes added some issues with lag and TD. Some decisions of judges were misunderstood. Spectators chatted in the ACA group (explaining rules or judging themselves), while others flew above the racers. Some competitors showed a total lack of sportmanship (fortunately rare but I heard the worst) and other (hopefully the majority) demonstrated perfect sportmanship. For some, the bad luck of crashes destroyed weeks of training. Also, of the 44 participants expected, only 33 were finally presented, some have not seeing fit to apologize before, resulting in some imbalance in the groups (group of 6 vs. group of 2).
To have discussed several times with the organization before the event, I do not surprise them by saying that I feared this day as compared to certain choices that were made on the race format and scoring: 3 heats with 1 discard could cause many cases of ties and a random effect, a risk of unbalanced groups, a risk of random results also in a match race on a single race associated with the possibility of Recall as it was defined …
Leon wins group2
Match race Leon vs. Ben (Ben demonstrated great sportmanship)
2 seconds after this pic, RD will RECALL due to TD
Leon windshadowing Ben
If I draw a picture here intentionally somewhat dark, it is to bring more light on what I regard as the greatest success of this event, one that deserves our applause, respect and appreciation:
The organization.
Organizing an event such this one, requires hours and hours of work during the prior weeks, with cases of conscience to manage, some research to do, discussion, writing tasks, development of tools, the case heads to solve the last minute surprises and all the previously mentioned difficulties to manage. The visible part of the iceberg, namely races, are only the result and a small part of the work that had to be conducted to arrive at the show.
So today, my thoughts, my thanks go first to Naeve Rossini and Quirky Torok.
Despite all the previous points, this day was a great success, they knew perfectly well to manage all the inevitable risks, have adapted to circumstances and through them, the competitors were able to delight us. 
I would associate also all members of the Race Committee, judges and security. A thought also for Nber and MarkTwain, they have saved hours and hours of video, again, a lot of work ahead.
Race Committee had to face all possible cases, difficulties. They did it, very well, with perfect timing and in good spirit. They made it possible, they made it a success. And here, all superlatives have a true sense.
There are several ways to thank them, e.g. by a short comment or post on .ORG, but the best is certainly to come next Saturday in the Blake Sea:
- as spectator, to enjoy the finals and to do a standing ovation to the Race Committee and Organization
- and you, competitors, by offering us (and them) the best of your talents.
What about the races could you ask? Detailled results have already been posted on .ORG together with some comments. For the record, below are overall results published using SailWave software. Now it is time for finalists to practice again and again. No doubt they will demonstrate again all their skills in Match racing, with strategy at the Start, use of rules set and Protests…
