Teen ranked top youth sailor Down Under, ahead of Games qualifying bid

Victoria Chan -- Photo: onEdition

She has one final shot at making the cut for the Olympic Games in Beijing and Victoria Chan is certainly setting herself up nicely.

Last week, she emerged as the top youth female sailor in the Laser Radial at the Australian Laser Championship (Dec 27–Jan 4), held at the Blairgowrie Yacht Squadron in Melbourne.

The 17-year-old Singapore Sports School student totalled 100 points nett from eight races to finish 12th overall in the 121-strong field, enough to pip Canada's Isabella Bertold (103 points) and give her the top female youth prize.

Australia's Sarah Blanck (20 points) won the event, with New Zealand's Jo Aleh (26) and the Czech Republic's Veronika Fencova (31) coming in second and third, respectively.

Speaking from Melbourne yesterday, Victoria said her form is progressing nicely ahead of the Laser Radial World Championship (March 16-21) in Auckland which is the final qualifying meet for the Olympics.

"The regatta is good practice for the world championships, especially if the conditions turn out similar, and the result has made me feel more confident to do well there," said Victoria, the 2006 women's Laser 4.7 world champion.

"I believe I can (qualify for the Olympics), after all the training and support we all have received. We are prepared for the qualifiers.

"The conditions here were mostly light to medium, tricky at times.

"But I managed to do well in the conditions. In stronger winds, I hung on with average scores and overall, I managed to be consistent."

This year's Olympic sailing competition takes place in Qingdao, China, from Aug 8-24.

Singapore have already qualified for the men's 470 event, after Roy Tay and Chung Pei Ming — gold medallists at last month's SEA Games in Pattaya, Thailand — booked their qualifying spot last July in the World Sailing Championship in Cascais, Portugal.

As long as Victoria finishes among the top 25 in the worlds, she will stand a good chance of qualifying for the Olympics, although she will only know for sure once the competition kicks off.

Looking ahead to the March event, SingaporeSailing chief executive officer Andrew Sanders, said: "Victoria has been sailing really well, but the key for her between now and the world championships is to be more consistent over a wider range of conditions.

"She also needs to do all she can to be as comfortable as possible racing in strong winds and big wave conditions because that's what it will be like in Auckland, with choppy seas.

"Being smaller in size, all of our squad will also need to bulk-up as much as possible through gym work and strength and conditioning."

Victoria is part of Project 0812, an initiative by the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports to help elite national athletes win medals at this year's and/or 2012 Olympic Games.

A total of 294 competitors took part in the Australian Laser Championship, which featured three classes — the Laser Standard, Laser Radial and Laser 4.7.

In the Laser Standard, Singapore's Koh Seng Leong, a silver medallist in the 2006 Asian Games and 2007 SEA Games, finished in 32nd spot.

Victoria and Koh are part of a 10-strong Singapore Laser team currently in Australia.

They will next compete in the Australian Youth Championship (Jan 6-10) and the Laser Asia-Pacific Championship (Jan 14-19) in Melbourne.

It will be the final tune-ups for both Olympic hopefuls before Koh makes his qualifying bid for the Beijing Games in the Laser Standard World Championship (Feb 5-13) in Terrigal, Australia, and Victoria fights it out in the Laser Radial worlds a month later.