The British women's match racing team have reached the semi-finals at the Sailing World Championships in Perth.
British trio progress to the final four after tough test
Great Britain's Lucy Macgregor, Annie Lush and Kate Macgregor have reached the semi-finals of the women's match racing event at the Sailing World Championships in Perth.
The defending champions overcame the Dutch trio of Mandy Mulder, Merel Witteveen and Annemiek Bekkering 3-1 in the quarter-final to earn their place in the final four after 12 days of hard-fought competition.
However, the Skandia Team GBR crew did it the hard way.
Having fallen the wrong side of a three-way tie-breaker in their round-robin preliminary group, they then had to race an additional 15 matches, winning 13 of them, to just make it into the knockout quarter-finals.
Lush said: "We're feeling good and are excited to finally be in the semi-finals and hopefully be one step closer to that title.
"It was quite shifty on the last downwind and she caught up a bit, we gybed at her on starboard and the umpires deemed that we didn't give her enough room to keep clear as our kite hit hers so unfortunately we got a penalty at the bottom of the final run so we didn't have enough time to get rid of it before the finish line.
"That was a little bit disappointing but we cleared our heads and knew that we were better than her, we were beating her around the course in every race, so we went into the final race and sealed it off, so that felt good."
The trio will face the French team, skippered by Claire Leroy, in Thursday's semi-final and are confident despite their intensive schedule.
Solid
In the 49er class, a solid day for John Pink and Rick Peacock, the 2010 world silver medallists, sees them on top of the leaderboard heading into gold fleet racing.
Dave Evans and Ed Powys are in fourth overall, just one point from third, with a ninth and a race win to show for their efforts while Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign are 16th.
Ireland's Ryan Seaton and Matt McGovern officially qualified for the 2012 Olympics, finishing 10th overall on Wednesday.
It will be the first time since Athens 2004 that Ireland have been represented in the 49er class.
Paul Goodison remains in second place in the Laser fleet with his sights trained on narrowing the gap on the Australian series leader and three-time world champion Tom Slingsby, while Nick Thompson drops to eighth.
GBR's top two 470 women's crews remain in the hunt after a day that saw difficult conditions catch out a number of athletes.
Penny Clark and Katrina Hughes are in fifth overall, with Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark just two points behind in seventh, while in the RS:X men's windsurfing event, Nick Dempsey has still to catch a break.
He lies in 20th overall with just one race possible for the fleet in the conditions on Wednesday, while Elliot Carney continues to hold his own in ninth.
