SAILING - Hansen sails into youth world champs

Whangarei sailor Marcus Hansen has been selected among the country's top youth sailors to contest the 39th Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championships in Buzios, Brazil, in July this year.
Hansen, the former Optimist class national champion teamed up with Taupo's James Turner last year and the long distance partnership has paid off in spades.
Both sail for the Murray's Bay Yacht Club in Auckland. "I know him pretty well from my club ... but he actually lives in Taupo and goes to school in Hamilton," Hansen said of Turner.
The two teamed up four months before this year's 420 nationals in Napier, and did well to finish sixth in their first major regatta.
The class is a natural predecessor to the Olympic 470, in which New Zealand is traditionally very strong.
Hansen got a good introduction in the class when he was sailing with Aucklander Finn Drummond, by competing at last year's World Championships in Greece. The experience paid off but the partnership was fairly short-lived.
"I was skippering back then but I got a bit too big for that so I started crewing [with Turner], and now we've qualified to go to youth worlds," he said.
The pair will crew the team's Hobi 60 craft at the Volvo Youth Sailing ISAF World Championships, often described as a forerunner to Olympic success.
New Zealand has a successful record, securing second place overall on the nations' ranking list in 2008, and third overall in 2007.
The top-rated Kiwi 420 pairing are Logan Dunning-Beck and Ben Goodwin, with Goodwin back for a third ISAF Youth Worlds.
Former Kerikeri sailor Alexandra Maloney and Bianca Barbarich-Bacher have teamed up for the Girls Double-Handed Dinghy division. As top female sailor in the 2007 Optimist World Championships, and third overall, Maloney has already succeeded on the world stage. In 2008 they narrowly missed achieving a bronze medal in the 29er class at the ISAF Worlds in Denmark.
Sam Meech will have an opportunity to improve on the bronze medal he won in the Boys Single Handed Division in Denmark.
His counterpart in the girls' event is Rachel Basevi, with Ben Mackay picked in the Boys Windsurfer division and Lucy Driver in the Girls Windsurfer event.
For Hansen, his selection is a big break. "I guess the experience itself is important. In some ways this is the group you go into before you go into an Olympic group.
"The main benefit for me in the short term is that it's a recognised national team, so I can become a carded athlete, which gets me free gym membership, access to physiotherapy and other benefits."
As for Brazil, "all I know is Brazil's a bit dangerous and that the sailing conditions [in Buzios] are very similar to Murray's Bay and there's no dominant wind strength," he said.