Sailing: Bouet battles his way to late hat-trick

Sailing

STUART ALEXANDER

reports from Sete, France

While most of the tourist world ashore was well into a sunset dinner, the eight Group B racers in the Coupe Brut de Faberge were still doing battle on the western Mediterranean last night.

Earlier, the eight in Group A had to wait until the afternoon to run three sets of races which in a shifty seven to nine knot southerly all went the way of the seeds, Peter Gilmour and Neville Witey, of Australia, gold medalist Thierry Peponnet, of France, and the Dutchman, Roy Heiner.

But the breeze then shifted west and piped up to 14 knots to produce better racing. Britain's Chris Law was in battling form for his opener against Peponnet's Olympic partner Luc Pillot.

Ed Baird went 2-0 against Luc Destremau and Pillot pulled one back against Sweden's Magnus Holmberg. But Law became the victim of Marc Bouet, coming from behind a second time.

In the last, twilight race Bouet made it a hat-trick against Baird, Holmberg beat J J Isler. Bertrand Pace, the world champion, surprisingly went down to Pillot, and Law ended upbeat - ahead of Destremau.