Hong Kong’s men are off to the Rugby Sevens World Cup in San Francisco next year after beating Japan 19-14 in extra-time in the final of the third round of the Asia Rugby Sevens Series in Sri Lanka.
To qualify for the Sevens World Cup Hong Kong needed to finish at least two spots ahead of South Korea to grab second spot in the series behind winners Japan and their tournament win meant they did it comfortably, with the Koreans slipping to fourth after losing the play-off for third spot to the hosts.
“It’s a huge thing for Hong Kong rugby to be playing in those major competitions. To beat Japan twice in two days is a great achievement and the most important thing was we knew we’d qualified going into that last game but it was just not to relax and go on and win the tournament.” said Hong Kong coach Paul John.
Toby Fenn and Kane Boucaut scored tries as Hong Kong battled back from a 14-7 half-time deficit to level things up when the hooter sounded, with Seb Brien crossing in the early stages of extra-time to secure victory.
Earlier on, Boucaut notched three tries and Hugo Stiles two as Hong Kong blitzed Taiwan 50-0 in the quarter-finals, while Salom Yiu Kam-shing found the line twice in a 26-12 semi-final win over Sri Lanka.
“The main goal was to get qualification and I’m just pleased the way that they dug in and fought for each other out there,” John said.
Local boat Xabi Fernández’s Mapfre were a popular winner in the first point scoring race of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race.
Fernández and his team made a bold call at the start to duck behind the entire fleet in order to sail up what turned out to be the favoured right hand side of the course, coming from behind to earn a narrow lead at the first gate.
“It was pretty clear from Joan (Vila) and Rob (Greenhalgh) that we wanted to hit the right side of the course in the first upwind looking for more breeze,” explained Fernández. “Our intention was to start on port but Pablo (Arrarte) saw the gap himself when Brunel did a poor tack and they couldn’t accelerate so we want for the cross and we had plenty of room and once we hit the right everything went well.”
Mapfre sailed away to establish a lead of nearly one-minute at the bottom gate, giving them a lead they would enjoy the rest of the way.
“The truth is it hasn’t been an easy race but we took a bit of a risk at the start,” Fernández said after the finish. “We saw the gap in front of Brunel and we went for it. Everything went really well.”
In fact, the Spanish team sailed a flawless race, in terms of strategy and execution, and were never threatened after grabbing the lead at the first mark.
But behind them, it was a hard-fought race. Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag was strong on the first leg, but dropped back over the course of the race. In contrast, Dongfeng Race Team fought up the fleet to grab second place, battling with Vestas 11th Hour Racing and Team Brunel who were trading places throughout the race.
“There was a lot of action! Mapfre played their own game alone but behind them, we had a big fight for second place. It’s good, it’s good,” said skipper Charles Caudrelier on Dongfeng Race Team.
“We showed how we can sail well, after having not such good results in the last few days. It’s great that we managed to come back and get this result.”
“It was a very exciting first In-Port Race for us,” said Charlie Enright, the skipper of Vestas 11th Hour Racing. “They’re always really close. You know, when you’re racing these 65-foot canting keel boats around a one-mile track it gets interesting, with a lot of exchanges and big headsails and a lot of grinding. We did some good things and some bad things and got third place. All in all, not a bad way to start the campaign.”
“I had a bad start and that put us on the back foot,” said Bouwe Bekking the skipper of Team Brunel. “But we sailed the boat very nicely. All in all, we’re pretty happy with how we sailed today.”
Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag made a late gain to grab fifth over team AkzoNobel with Turn the Tide on Plastic never recovering from a poor first leg.
“It was okay. Fifth’s not great but it was okay. We were second at the top but we just made one mistake on the first run and it cost us. Basically, it was good. Amazing to be racing here in Alicante,” said David Witt, the skipper of Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag.
Hong Kong’s men and women enter the final round of the Asia Rugby Sevens Series in Sri Lanka needing strong performances to qualify for next year’s Rugby World Cup Sevens.
A new-look women’s side featuring four changes will take on Japan, Sri Lanka and South Korea in pool play.
Debutants Jessica Ho Wai-on, Agnes Chan Tsz-ching and Poon Hoi-yan all come in to the side, as well as the returning Sham Wai-sum, replacing Au Yeung Sin-yi, Steph Chan Chor-ki, Lindsay Varty and Yuen Lok-yee.
After a condensed build-up due to the Women’s Rugby World Cup, Richards admits her side are still underdone but are better positioned than in the first round of the women’s competition in South Korea three weeks ago.
“The girls have been training pretty well so we are looking forward to it,” she said. “The first leg was pretty difficult and we didn’t have a great lead into that; I think the girls are more comfortable in the sevens environment now
“Are we sevens fit? Probably not, but the girls have trained well since we came back. What I liked about the first tournament was that we got a good look at the top three so we will be going into this tournament better for that.”
Richards is looking forward to having Sham back in the side and is excited to see World Cup representatives Ho and Chan, as well as the youngster Poon, in action: “I thought [Agnes] played really well at the World Cup so it will be great to see what she can do on the field for us.”
Japan are leading the men’s competition and are the likely winners, while Korea sit two points ahead of Hong Kong after triumphing on home soil three weeks ago with Hong Kong had settling for third.
It means Hong Kong must finish at least two places above South Korea this weekend or things will be awfully tight.
“If we don’t play Korea and don’t win the tournament, then we need to finish two places above them,” coach Paul John said. “We need to play Korea at some point, whoever wins that game will be ahead in the head to head. The bottom line is that if we do really well and win the tournament we will be okay, if we meet Korea along the way that will help us provided we get a positive result from it.
Hong Kong face Japan, Malaysia and the Philippines in pool play, with South Korea and Sri Lanka awaiting on the other side of the draw.
“It means that we get a really good game on day one [against Japan] and depending on what happens at the end of day one is where we cross over,” John said. “It all depends on how the tournament goes and with sevens you can never really predict it so every game is a massive game for us now to put us in a good position for day two.
“Sri Lanka will be stronger being at home and China gave us a difficult game at the end of the tournament last time.”
Debutant Max Denmark comes into the side after recently figuring for the Hong Kong U20s at the World Rugby Junior Trophy. Denmark replaces Fong Kit-fung, who sustained an ankle injury in the last round, in what is the only change to John’s squad.
“Max has been training with us for the last three or four weeks,” John said. “He’s very quick and he’s played wings for the under 20s, he’s a back-row forward as well as playing wing. He gives us a bit of speed out wide and I’m looking forward to watching him play. He’s powerful and he chases kick-offs really well, so it’s exciting for him.”
The first official racing of the 2017-18 Volvo Ocean Race takes place on the 14 October with the first In-Port race in the start port of Alicante.
Who will win the first points scoring event of the race? The start gun is at 14:00 local time (12:00 UTC) as seven of the best sailing teams in the world push hard to lay down a marker ahead of the main race start.
“You always go out and want to win,” said Bouwe Bekking, skipper of Team Brunel, who will have Alberto (Albi) Bolzan on the helm for the race. “He’s an excellent helmsman. He has a lot of hours driving these boats but he’s also one of the smaller guys on board and it’s important to have power on the winches for these in-port races.”
“I think the most important thing for the in-port race is to treat it as practice for the race start for the offshore leg,” said Charles Caudrelier, speaking from experience after starting behind the fleet on the Prologue leg. “Even on the long legs, the start is important… it helps the team to be confident to get the lead early.”
“A lot of the sailors on our team come from short course racing,” said Dee Caffari the skipper on Turn the Tide on Plastic. “So they get a real buzz out of this. They’re all over this style of racing. I have to remind them that a Volvo Ocean 65 takes a bit longer to manoeuvre and we can’t go as close to the other boats as they’re used to, so I have to manage expectations a bit!”
The In-Port Race Alicante is two laps of a windward-leeward course, set with a target time of 45-minutes. The course is set up with a gate system, with two top (windward) marks and two bottom (leeward) marks.
In Friday’s practice session, MAPFRE took the win over Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag, who impressed with their best showing, and Vestas 11th Hour Racing, who took third place, completing the podium.
Following on from the recent success in the East Asia Cup the HK Cricket selection panel has selected a 14 player squad for the upcoming Pre Tour to India and ICC World T20 Asia Region Qualifiers.
The team will spend 6 days in India then fly directly to Bangkok for their T20 Asia Region Qualifiers.
“This was a tough selection process for the Panel with some talented players missing out, but we’re confident we have selected a balanced side that has the potential to go on and win the tournament.”
“The goals that we had set was to win the East Asia Cup and our regional WT20 Qualifiers. The belief is there within the squad that we can go on and complete what we have set out to do.”
The team again will be under the Leadership of Mariko Hill. Which shows one change from the East Asia Squad. Keenu Gill is unavailable because of work commitments, and sees Marina Lamplough return to the squad.
“Marina has got an excellent chance to again stake her claim to be back in the starting 11. She knows that over the next 4 weeks she will need to put in the hard yards.”
Lemon Cheung has been added to the Pre Tour to India to let her gain vital experience for futures tours.
Tour to India: 12-18 November, 2017
Mariko Hill, Captain, (HKCC), Kary Chan, Vice Captain, (CCC), Yasmin Daswani, (HKCC), Pull To, (CCC), Shanzeen Shahzad, (DSLW), Jenefer Davies (KCC), Natural Yip (HKCC), Annie Ho (HKCC), Bella Poon (KCC), Chan Sau Ha (HKCC), Marina Lamplough (HKCC), Emma Lai (HKCC), Ruchi Venketesh (HKCC), Lemon Cheung (HKCC)
World T20 Asia Region Qualifiers: 18-28 November, 2017
Mariko Hill, Captain, (HKCC), Kary Chan, Vice Captain, (CCC), Yasmin Daswani, (HKCC), Pull To, (CCC), Shanzeen Shahzad, (DSLW), Jenefer Davies (KCC), Natural Yip (HKCC), Annie Ho (HKCC), Bella Poon (KCC), Chan Sau Ha (HKCC), Marina Lamplough (HKCC), Emma Lai (HKCC), Ruchi Venketesh (HKCC), Betty Chan (HKCC)
The seven Volvo Ocean Race skippers will have a final oppourtunity to tune their boats on the Prologue Leg, a non-scoring race to the start port of Alicante, Spain. It’s a last chance for teams to lock in crew configurations and get in some speed testing against the competition ahead of the start of Leg 1 on October 22.
“This is the last opportunity for all of the boats to face each other before we start,” says Mark Towill of Vestas 11th Hour Racing. “We’ll be lining up against the other teams to check the things we’ve learned during testing compared to the rest of the fleet.”
Towill and his team have been training against team AkzoNobel. The Dutch team’s Luke Molloy spoke of the benefit from the sessions.
“The two boat training sessions we did with Vestas 11th Hour Racing were definitely very valuable and actually quite eye opening in a few areas,” he confirms. “Just to check on some of our sail crossovers and lock down what we think we know in some other performance areas.”
Turn the Tide on Plastic skipper Dee Caffari says she’ll be giving some of her crew who have less offshore miles time on board during the Prologue, as her team makes the transition from training to competition.
“It’s an opportunity to get back into race mode,” she says. “It’s almost a practice of Leg 1, because we’re going from Lisbon to Alicante and that’s going to be the reverse for Leg 1 so it’s nice to suss it out.”
Leg Zero,SHK Onboard,. Video by Konrad Frost/Volvo Ocean Race. 21July,2017..Onboard sailing action
Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag, disappointed with its results this summer during Leg Zero, will be racing with some new crew members and navigator Steve Hayles says the team will be looking to bed in improvements made during practice over the past month.
“I think (on Leg Zero) everything was sub-par, so this is a good chance to put into effect everything we’ve been doing since. We’ve been sailing hard, we’ve done at least as many miles as anyone else, and so this is a good opportunity to cement those changes. Nothing is as good a measure of where you stand as going racing and hopefully we’ve made a big step up in our team performance.”
Rob Greenhalgh, about to embark with the Spanish team MAPFRE on his fifth Volvo Ocean Race, is looking forward to this final look at the opposition.
“It’s pretty important. Everyone’s going to be keen to check in,” he says. “We’ll be keen to race properly… we won’t be backed off. We’ll be going for it!”
Dongfeng Racing team director Bruno Dubois will see his team leave the dock in Lisbon satisfied they have done what they need to do to be ready to race by the start of Leg 1.
“My objective was to make sure we put everything in place and didn’t leave anything to chance,” Dubois explains. “We made a plan and we’ve stayed to it. Maybe someone is going to head out in Leg 1 and be very fast, but we’ve done what we needed to do to make our boat ready and fast for the start of the race. After that, well, it’s a long race.”
Dongfeng Race Team goes sailing in their re-fitted Volvo Ocean 65 as they begin training for the 2017-18 edition.
The weather forecast offers a mixed bag that will get the wrinkles out of all the new sails the teams have installed in Lisbon. The boats will race upwind through the Gibraltar Straight early on Tuesday morning against the infamous Levanter easterly wind that could accelerate to over 30kts, all while penned in by a narrow coast, heavy shipping exclusion zones and coastal fishing nets. Forced into a 1.5-mile wide channel, skippers will be balancing the desire to push for a good result in their last warm-up versus the need to protect new sails that need to last 45,000 miles around the world.
Bouwe Bekking, the skipper of Team Brunel, was very candid about placing a priority on protecting his equipment.
“It’s about finding that balance between pushing the boat, getting it ready, and putting the least amount of hours on the new sails,” he says. “If there is a lot of wind, we’ll want to save our sails… that’s just what we have to do.”
After the Straights, the fleet will continue upwind through the Alboran Sea along the south Spanish coast in an uncomfortable sea state created by fresh easterlies running over the permanent eastwards current created by the Atlantic flowing into the Mediterranean. Turning northwards by Cabo de Gata, the wind is expected to drop to just 5 knots from the east, pushing the homecoming in the Alicante race village deep into Wednesday evening.
“We heard all the stories about how the Race Village in Alicante is nearly ready and everyone is waiting for us to arrive,” Caffari says. “And I know from the moment we arrive, the circus begins and it is pretty much non-stop. The time will fly by and we’ll be crossing that start line and heading away from Alicante for Leg 1 in no time.”
Hong Kong will host the 2019 World Rowing Coastal Championships, the decision was announced at the end of the recent World Rowing Championships.
Coastal rowing takes place in open water in boats designed for a wide variety of sea conditions. It’s very different from Olympic style rowing where racing is in a straight line on flat water.
About 400 competitors are expected to attend with racing tentatively planned to take place in Victoria Harbour in November 2019.
Scallywag, Hong Kong’s first ever entry in the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-18, have announced three new crew members, Tom Clout (AUS), António Fontes (POR) and Dutch Olympic Silver medallist, Annemieke Bes (NED).
Skipper David Witt, who previously stated he was intending to sail with a crew of seven men, surprised many race watchers by including Bes as part of his final crew line up. New race rules, designed to incentivise teams to take female crew, limit an all-male crew to seven sailors. Under race rules, a mixed crew can include up to an additional two female sailors.*
Until this announcement, Team Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag was the only boat in the race not to have any female sailors. Witt, who has had time to review his crew decisions since Leg Zero (qualifying) is now more confident in the setup of his team.
“We’re really excited to have these three experienced sailors joining us at Team Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag. Annemieke and Tom have sailed with us before so we know what to expect in terms of their strengths and eeaknesses and where their skills will really enhance our overall performance.
“In addition to these two, António is a great asset, and altogether they have strengthened our team immensely from where we were when we started out two months ago.”
Bes was, until recently, part of team AkzoNobel, the Dutch entry in the race skippered by Simeon Tienpont, but recently made the switch to Witt’s team.
“I really look forward to sailing with Team Sun Hung Kai / Scallywag. I’ve known David from sailing back in Sydney and it’s always good fun to sail with him. The team are a great bunch of guys and we are working hard making final preparations ready for the October start date.”
Neither Clout nor Fontes has Volvo Ocean Race experience but Witt is confident their sailing experience and characters will contribute strongly to the team.
“I’m confident we’re now in a good position ahead of the start of the race and we will continue to improve throughout the legs as we work together as a new team.”
The boats are currently undergoing a final maintenance period in Lisbon ahead of sailing to Alicante for the start of the race on 22 October 2017.
Team Sun Hung Kai/Scallywag
David Witt (skipper, AUS), Steve Hales (GBR), Luke Parkinson (AUS), Mark Fullerton (NZ), Alex Gough (AUS), Ben Piggott (AUS), David Mann (AUS), John Fisher (UK), Tiger Mok (Hong Kong), Tom Clout (AUS), António Fontes (POR), Annemieke Bes (NED). On Board Reporter: Konrad Frost (GBR).
*Other crew configurations include 10 sailors if the team consists of an even male/female split. An all-female team may race with 11 crew.
