Origin hit form on final day of Stena Match Cup

(LORIS VON SIEBENTHAL )

Ben Ainslie and his Team Origin hit winning form on the final day of the Stena Match Cup in Marstrand to win the trophy and with it a precious 25 points.

He lost one race to Australia’s Torvar Mirsky in the semi-final and then went on to beat Denmark’s Jesper Radich 2-0 in the final, including trapping the Dane with a pre-start red flag penalty.

The weather was better, but the wind more tricky as thousands lined the the harbour, using the rocks as a natural amphitheatre. Ainslie, with fellow Olympic gold medallist Iain Percy as tactician, was barely troubled and has set a new marker at what is the halfway point in the World Match Race Tour as well as a new problem for fellow-Brit, Ian Williams.

He has decided to do as many as possible of the remaining five events on the 2010 calendar. The win in Sweden lifts him to fifth overall, seven points behind fourth-placed Williams and his Team CAG Pindar.

They both line up at St.Moritz following the UK’s Olympic sailing regatta, Skandia Sail for Gold, at Weymouth in August.

Before that Ainslie will be at the helm of the Team Origin’s TP52 at an Audi MedCup regatta in Barcelona next week which is also being sponsored by the Spanish shoe company Camper, which is working towards a Volvo campaign next year.

But expected to be absent is Origin’s top designer, Juan Kouyumdjian. The Argentinian has been sidelined by Origin’s new chief executive, the Australian Grant Simmer. Simmer, formerly with Swiss America’s Cup team Alinghi, was brought in by Origin boss Sir Keith Mills. Simmer, who replaced Mike Sanderson, wants to see a reshuffled, integrated design team when the shape and size of the new boats for AC34 is announced towards the end of the year.

Hanging up their Olympic tiller extensions and trapeze wires are double silver medallist Nick Rogers and crew Pom Green, stepping down ahead of Monday’s start to the 470 dinghy world championship in The Hague.

That hands the mantle of British number ones to Nic Asher and Elliot Willis, who won the class at the Dutch Olympic regatta earlier this year.

Asher, 25, and Willis, 27, won the world titles in 2006 and 2008. “If we keep sailing how we’ve been sailing and keep plugging away, I’m sure we’ll be up there at the end of the event,” said Asher.

In the women’s division this will be an important barometer of progress for Sarah Ayton and Saskia Clark as Ayton, now a mother and married to Nick Dempsey, hopes to win a third consecutive gold medal.

In Lorient, Bertrand Pace, who has struggled on the world match race tour, is leading the Tour de France a la Voile as Rob Greenhalgh, whose brother Peter, with Chris Draper, won gold at the 49er Europeans, is lying sixth with his Omani team.

Lorient is also the training base for the Oman 100-foot trimaran which will contest the Route du Rhum later this year.