Victorian Jono Neate successfully completed a 12 month plan when he scored a brilliant win in the 40th Contender class championship on a bumpy Waterloo Bay in early January.
Neate finished second in the 2009 World Series held in Sonderborg (Denmark) when Italian Andrea Bonezzi won his 7th World crown and was determined to reverse the result in Brisbane but that was never going to be an easy task.
His challenge appeared to be floundering in the notorious ‘Waterloo Slop’ when Andrea Bonezzi won two of the first 4 races while Neate was not so tidy with a far from impressive 8-4-4-2 to trail the defending champion by nine points.
However Neate progressively fought back into contention with three impressive wins to place Bonezzi on notice that he had the skill, boat speed and confident tactical strategy to become the champion.
After seven races Neate have moved from being a pretender to a definite contender after he cleverly outsailed his 59 rivals representing nine nations to add a 1-1-1 to his score.
But his personal challenge continued to remain as work in progress when German Christolph Homeier with his spread of consistent results built from starting smart and then assessing the real value from the variable wind changes shared a title winning chance with both Bonezzi and Neate when the sailed onto the course for final two races.
Heavy dew overnight was nature’s sign that the fleet would finally have their moderate wind sailing skills tested in a 12-15 knot sea breeze.
A tad more ‘grunt’ in the wind was expected to favour the stocky Italian but that was laid to rest when Jono Neate handed the fleet and his major rival Bonezzi another lesson of sailing in the faster lane winning the heat by 19 seconds from Bonezzi to enter the final as a clear 3 point leader while Bonezzi and Christolph Homeier remained tied for second.
The focus of tactical attention was naturally targeted towards Jono Neate however he still managed to protect his sailing space and started confidently while England’s Simon Mussel and Queensland’s Philip Evans and Geoffrey Fisher set the pace up front.
Mussel remained unmatched for pace scoring a 50second win from Philip Evans with another 20 seconds to Geoffrey Fisher with Jono Neate sealing a deserved World championship victory when he finished fourth only 3 seconds away.
As expected the super fit aquatic athlete was elated to achieve his personal best after finishing second to Bonezzi in 2009 by cleverly reversing the result to become the 40th World champion in 2010.
By Ian Grant.