Chennai,Nov 5: On a day that belonged to Mumbais Upamanyu Dutta in the Optimist Category, the Danish favourite pair of Kristian Kirketerp and Mathias Sletten held on to their supremacy to clinch the 29 er category title with a huge margin in the Volvo India International Regatta.
On the penultimate day today with waves swelling sometimes reaching ten feet high and strong current, Dutta, started at the middle but worked his way in a brilliant manner to win the first race.
Slightly built sailors had the advantage with the wind dropping intensively but Dutta faced stiffer challenge in the next two races particularly from Singapore's Bernie C.Choon.
Dutta sailed a focused race to come first while local Indians Rufus Patrick and Praveen Prabhakar were second and third respectively.
For the girls it was a forgettable race with Indian girl Sidra Sabir coming in seventh, Varsha Gautham ninth, Ekta Yadav 11, Zephra 12, Nivedita 14. Kenyan Lara Granier finished fifteenth. The Singapore team managed to post a couple of single digit finishes in that race too.
However, Sankalp and Dutta swapped their places at the end of the third race. With the completion of these races sailors get to exclude two of their worst scores and thanks to this stipulation, Sankalp and Upamanyu Dutta discarded 62 points each to exchange places, with the former slipping down to fourth with 35 points yielding the third place to the latter who ended the day with 32 points.
Other local Indians, Rufus and Ganapathy lead the table with 13 and 29 points..
- Agencies
Nov 05, 2009
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