The Australian Sailing Team’s Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen have finished second at the 2010 49er World Championship after putting in a great final day performance.

After sitting as low as tenth during the week Outteridge and Jensen won both final day Gold fleet races and finished third in the Medal race to end up 27 points behind runaway winners Iker Martinez and Xabier Hernadez of Spain and 12 clear of third placed Pietro and Gianfranco Sibello of Italy.

The pair entered the last day of the regatta in fifth position just seven points behind second place knowing that they needed a good start to keep the pressure on the leaders.

“For us to finish second after where we were on the first day of Gold fleet it was a really good result,” said Outteridge. “After being on the edge of the top 10 and to move forward yesterday and again today we were really happy with that.”

“You had to sail really high risk here and the Spanish are really good at sailing high risk all the time,” he said. “As soon as you try and go conservative and cover someone you get passed cause it’s so shifty, the key was to sail high risk and back yourself and those who backed themselves did really well in the end.”

“We didn’t have anything to gain from the medal race, we had 10 points on third so we just wanted to try and finish in the top five so that there was no way that anyone could beat us. At one stage we slipped back to sixth but we kept patient because over four laps anything could happen, on one of the downwinds the French missed a big puff and went from first to fourth and we jumped from sixth to third on the next beat.”

“After that things were a bit more relaxed but for the middle two laps it was a bit nerve racking,” said Outteridge.

The Australian Sailing Team’s 49er coach Emmett Lazich was impressed with how well Outteridge and Jensen sailed when under pressure.

“Today Nathan and Iain had good speed, particularly downwind,” said Lazich. “They sailed near flawlessly and won the day’s opening two races by a very comfortable margin, it was delightful to watch as their coach.”

“After the Spanish picked up a fourth in the opening race second was the best the boys could hope for and they kept cool under plenty of pressure from the Italians and French,” he said.

“Overall I’m really happy with how they went, it would have been nice for Nathan to win three World Championships in a row and Iain two in a row but now they’ll just have to start again and win the next three.”

Will and Sam Phillips finished the regatta in 15th after recording a 17th and 14th in the final two races. The pair had a good regatta including taking a race win in the Gold fleet and would have gained a lot of experience racing alongside the world’s best 49er crews.

West Australians Steven Thomas and Luke Parkinson finished in 21st position, ahead of fellow Australians Euan McNicol and Tim Austin in 23rd.

In the silver fleet Andrew Chapman and Peter Kendall finished 15th, while Sean O’Rourke and Harry Bethwaite were 25th.