Budgens back in the swim

Sailing

The art of recovery was much needed by Andy and Ian Budgen on the second day of the Audi Laser 500 National championship in Hayling Bay yesterday, writes Stuart Alexander. After winning all three races on Monday the Gourock pair found themselves well down the 53-boat fleet in the first race but came back to finish 10th, hooked themselves round the turning buoy in the second and fought back from third last to finish eighth, and then scored a third in the final race.

They had been second in the much stronger breeze at the end of a day which had offered light winds for the first race and medium for the second. In that race Paul Brotherton and Tim Hancock blasted off early and were disqualified. As they had suffered the same fate on Monday, this has ended one of the main threats to the Budgens defending their 1995 title.

The two-boat French team of Jean-Philippe Saliou in Gavroche and Domenic Bourgeois in Cyrano were leading the second leg of the Teacher's Round Britain Challenge from Galway to Oban last night, having already won the first from Cowes.