Yachting: Good start for New Zealand crew

The women's match racing crew will hope they have set the tone for the rest of the New Zealand contingent at the ISAF sailing world championships in Perth, after three wins from four races on the opening day of the event yesterday.

The world championships are the biggest event on the sailing calendar this year and double as the Olympic qualifiers, with 75 per cent of the country qualifications for London decided at this regatta.

Competition started with the women's match racing yesterday and goes through to December 18. The men's 470, women's RS:X, Finn, and Radial fleets start racing tomorrow (Monday).

The New Zealand crew of Stephanie Hazard, Jenna Hansen and Susannah Pyatt made a good start to their campaign, beating Argentina, China and Canada. They were beaten by Finland, who won this year's Olympic test event in Weymouth.

"Today was a decent day but it is still so early," said Caroline Brisebois, who is providing support to the match racing crew. "There are 10 more races for these girls in the first round robin.

"It was a tough day for the organising and race committee, running races in a working port. It's a difficult race area."

Competition yesterday took part in the inner harbour of Fremantle's busy shipping port.

Match racing will feature at the Olympics for the first time in 2012 with racing in the New Zealand-designed Elliott 6, and New Zealand need to finish in the top eight of the 12 nations competing in Perth to qualify for London. In the first round, each team sails the other once, with the top 10 teams from both pools progressing to the second stage.

New Zealand took some good form into the regatta. In October they won the New Zealand women's match racing championships and followed that up with a second place at the Busan women's Match Cup in Korea, an ISAF grade 1 event.

They have a day off today but opened yesterday with a comfortable victory, winning by nearly a minute over Argentina who copped a penalty in the pre-start and struggled to make up any ground.

China also picked up a penalty in New Zealand's second race but kept in touch and crossed just 20 seconds behind.

The strong Finnish team, skippered by Silja Lehtine, posed more of an obstacle but New Zealand rebounded in the final match of the day with good win over Canada.