2024 PredictWind Moth Worlds - Day 5 - Coutts wins his first world title
by Richard Gladwell, Sail-World.com/nz 9 Jan 02:51 PST
4-9 January 2024
Mattias Coutts - sailing with near perfect trim upwind - Day 5 - 2024 PredictWind Moth Worlds - Manly Sailing Club. January 9, 2025 © Richard Gladwell - Sail-World.com/nz
Mattias Coutts (NZL) won the Predictwind 2024 World Moth Champion title, with a consistent string of top five places in the four races sailed on the final day.
To underline the point, Coutts was the only sailor in the 74 entry fleet to not finish outside the top ten in any of the 17 races sailed in the Qualifiers and Finals. He did of course have an alphabet place (DNS) when he hit what was reported elsewhere to be a shark - smashing his rudder gantry and foil. However, that incident aside, he had a very consistent regatta, in a difficult-to-master class where it is very easy to be inconsistent.
Ashore after the regatta, Russell Coutts, one of the sport's most credentialled sailors, put Mattias' win into context when he confessed to have never won a world singlehanded title (he was a former World Youth Champion in the then Laser class). The very proud father was more than happy to be eclipsed by his 19yr old son, who'd just won an open world title - in arguably the toughest class outside the Five Ring Circus.
But it was a different story five hours earlier, in much the same spot, as Russell Coutts helped Mattias to wheel his Moth down the pathway alongside the Manly Sailing Club. There we once again saw the familiar Coutts game-face, of tight lipped determination and focus, which the more relaxed looking Mattias took onto the water turning in yet another display of focused sailing - while others let the moment get to them.
In contrast to the previous five racing days, the breeze swung overnight from a fresh SW (offshore) breeze, to a light seabreeze - building to 8-12kts, accompanied by blue skies and bright sunshine, after the start was delayed by an hour to 1pm.
Coutts went into the final day with a 10 point margin, over second placed Jacob (Jake) Pye, one of Coutts the younger's training partners. Despite winning the last race, Pye was unable make a dent in Coutts points lead - in fact it expanded by another 3pts. However a 24th in the penultimate race of the series made a win 'mission impossible' for Pye.
Until that point the two were level-pegging, with Coutts scoring 6pts under the low points system to Pay's 7pts lost. In the end it was Pye who blinked first, placing 16th and his discard race in the penultimate race of the series. He bounced back with an emphatic win in the final race of the series, but it was never going to be enough to rein in Coutts, whose second discard place in the 17 race series was a mere seventh place.
Without the availability of mark rounding data it is impossible to deduce what happened during the racing - which with the speed and maneuverability of the foiling Moths was like trying to unravel a WW2 dogfight between a bunch of Spitfires and Messerschmidts.
The march of the youth sailors continued with the hope of the Open Group, Richard Didham (USA), dropping back to eighth place after a string of uncharacteristic double digit placings which murdered his pointscore. However Didhams, at eighth overall remained the top open fleet sailor.
Otto Henry, another Youth sailor and current Australian Moth National Champion, climbed from seventh on the overnight leaderboard to third overall, after sailing very consistently in the final four races. He finished on 69pts along with a former Youth World champion in the 420 class and now a leading youth competitor in the 49er class. The tiebreaker went the way of the Australian, who was also the top international competitor at the event.
The top of the leaderboard dominance by youth sailors has been one of the talking points of the series - taking the top seven overall. Interestingly, as Russell Coutts was keen to point out, in a chat with media, that none of the top sailors had come through the Optimist pathway.
The next World Championship will be held at Lake Garda in mid-late July 2025.
See full results [PDF]