Stevie and Ben finished in 7th place at the 2010 49er World Championships which finished on Saturday. Five out of the seven GBR teams at the event made it into the medal race and hence the top ten, but disappointingly none of them had a podium finish. Best Brits were development squad members Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign in 5th place, followed by Chris Draper, bronze medallist at the Athens games, with new crew Peter Greenhalgh.
The new 49er World Champions are former Olympic, World and European Champions Iker Martinez de Lizarduy and Xavier Fernandez of Spain. Aussies Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen, winners of the last two World titles, took the silver with Italy's Sibello brothers in third place. Going into the medal race, only the eventual winners were secure, with a more than twenty point lead over the rest of the fleet. The next six boats were separated by less than twenty points. Team GBR's 49er coach, Harvey Hilary said "It's disappointing for us that we didn't come away with a medal, but we certainly did a lot of things right this week."
Picture credit: Fried Elliott/ww.friedbits.com
