{"id":332,"date":"2012-01-09T12:18:55","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T12:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/?p=332"},"modified":"2012-01-09T12:18:55","modified_gmt":"2012-01-09T12:18:55","slug":"glenn-ashby-a-class-catamaran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/2012\/01\/glenn-ashby-a-class-catamaran\/","title":{"rendered":"Ashby Wins John Cootes Furniture A Class Australian Championships"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Glenn Ashby has secured another win for Emirates Team NZ over ORACLE Racing in multihulls – though the results of the John Cootes Furniture A Class Australian<\/a> Championships were perhaps never in doubt.<\/p>\n

Ashby has won the A Class Catamaran World Championships 7 times and was in a different class to the newcomers who had their new boats delivered days before the event started.<\/p>\n

Ashby remarked:<\/p>\n

\u2018Every National win is important but this field, with so much depth of talent and competition, is definitely the strongest fleet I have ever sailed against in the A-Cats at ANY level.\u00a0It\u2019s fantastic, the top guys coming in from other classes, here giving it a go. The fact that these guys want to come sail in the A Class Championships is a giant tick for multihulls.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the end, Ashby won easily, with a day to spare, dropping his worst result (a 4th) to finish ahead of\u00a0Nathan Outteridge,\u00a0Steve Brewin and Darren Bundock<\/a>. James Spithill was 5th.<\/p>\n

But amongst the ‘rock-star’ pros was 71 year old John Cootes.<\/p>\n

Father John Cootes became the first Roman Catholic priest to play international rugby league. He played for Australia as a three-quarter in 1969 and 1970.<\/p>\n

Cootes eventually left the priesthood to marry and after retiring from football, Cootes enjoyed a long and successful media career, becoming a sports commentator for Channel 10. From 1979-1983 he was the host of Channel 10’s Saturday Night Live programme. He started a successful furniture store chain in the 1980\u2019s.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Sail-World<\/a>\u00a0Cootes reveals that some of Australia’s top sailors were willing to help get him on the water in an A Class Cat:<\/p>\n

\u00a0“When the Worlds came up I couldn\u2019t help it, I had got to try the A-Cat. Fortunately I bumped into Glenn Ashby on the shore and he said \u2018John I have a boat I can sell you.”<\/p>\n

\u2018When I bought the boat, I had no idea how to rig it and I called Bob Fussel and said \u2018who is someone that can teach me?\u2019 Bob said call this young fellow. It was Nathan Outteridge – Nathan was my first coach. What a great start. He was great.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And though his sponsorship of the event, John Cootes is also giving back to the sport:<\/p>\n

I love the sport. I love the people involved and I have gotten a great deal of enjoyment out of it. I have been very fortunate being successful in business and I am more than happy to encourage the sport itself, the people involved and especially the younger generation (hence the sponsorship<\/a> of the event.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

James Spithill enjoyed being back in Australia competing with his mates:<\/p>\n

A really impressive fleet, 70 boats, and a wonderful regatta. With the curved (dagger) boards, trapezing, Glenn and Nathan are on another level downwind; they are real naturals on the wire while the rest of us look like a bunch of teabags. Just to be able to mix it with Steve Brewin, Scott Anderson and Andrew Landenberger, who have had so much time in these boats, was wonderful.<\/p>\n

Myself, Dirk (de Ridder), Tom and Darren are taking our boats to San Francisco. On the trapeze downwind in SFO will be a blast!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The A Class Nationals are one of the events that the America’s Cup are trying to piggy-back on for media during a long break over the Northern Hemisphere winter. The Official site has covered the event with daily updates and ORACLE racing have also pushed their team members’ involvement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glenn Ashby has secured another win for Emirates Team NZ over ORACLE Racing in multihulls – though the results of the John Cootes Furniture A Class Australian Championships were perhaps never in doubt. Ashby has won the A Class Catamaran World Championships 7 times and was in a different class to the newcomers who had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[354,39,24,327,355,356,358,25,357,359],"class_list":["post-332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-race-news","tag-a-class","tag-australia","tag-catamaran","tag-darren-bundock","tag-glenn-ashby","tag-james-spithill","tag-john-cootes","tag-multihull","tag-nathan-outteridge","tag-nsw"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332\/revisions\/335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/yachtracing.biz\/life\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}