Mueller ice cool to take Dragon honours

A classic outcome for a classic one-design boat, celebrating the 65th anniversary of one of sailing’s best known trophies, was completed off the Old Head of Kinsale yesterday when Germany’s Tommy Mueller discovered he had won the event overall in a remarkable comeback.

It had been a week of comebacks, and as Mueller with his crew Vincent Hoesch, himself a six-time winner of the Gold Cup, and bowman Michael Lipp set out on the sixth and final race in a distant third place to overall leader Lawrie Smith.

Smith had been the winner by a nose of the first race, denying class master Poul Richard Hoj-Jensen the honour an setting out his intentions in typical form.

But that first race almost seems so long ago after a gruelling week and around 12 hours of slogging out results on the open water course south of the Bulman Rock.

Smith appeared to have it all yesterday: consistent form after a day two setback of an 18th place, his badly injured knee under control and a nice 12-point lead over Russia’s Dimitry Samokhin in second.

All he needed to do was be 11 places ahead of the Russian and 20 places ahead of Mueller.

But, while the German crew opened up an early and commanding lead, both Smith and Samokhin were nowhere to be seen in the regular top 10 places.

Instead it was Hoj-Jensen who was staging a little comeback of his own from a distant top 10 place after the wheels came off his challenge mid-regatta and he was clearly heading for second place in the final race, even if a top three overall place was improbable.

Mueller crossed in first place after two hours and while clearly pleased to have ended the regatta with a win, was clearly puzzled about the overall outcome.

With no sign of the top leaders at the finishing-line and the main mass of the 60-boat fleet approaching, he sailed for home and was later confirmed as the outright winner when Smith narrowly missed his top 20 place to finish 22nd and lost the overall lead by a single point to Mueller.

Samokhin placed 19th and took third place but the Gold Cup was lifted by Mueller for the second time since 2002.

Hosts Kinsale Yacht Club were celebrating too, not just for completing a full programme of six windy races, the first in six years but also for Commodore Cameron Good with crew Simon Furney and Henry Kingston who won the Corinthian Trophy plus 12th overall, one place behind best the Irish boat, helmed by Martin Byrne with Adam Winkelmann and Pedro Andrade, who were 11th.