Hornos and Bueno win Star Western Hemisphere Championship

33 teams representing 7 nations gathered at Biscayne Bay Yacht Club in Miami, Florida for the Star Western Hemisphere Championship.

The event came to a thrilling conclusion on Sunday when a come from behind victory by the USA / Brazil duo of Tomas Hornos and Mauricio Bueno, who overturned a deficit of 3 points in the final two races.

For the runners-up, the Swiss pair of Piet Eckert and Frederico Melo, it was disappointment, especially after their perfect scoreline on the second to last day of the event.

Tomas Hornos said after winning:

“Really complicated strategy today, we went into the day three points behind Piet and Frederico and they were sailing really strong and we had to make sure that we didn't sail a drop race early in the in the day so we kind of sailed our own race the first race.

“Most of the fleet was focused on one side of the course and so we played the shifts and ended up winning the race pretty handily, which made the second race today very, very interesting because there were now only two points separating us. Again, it was wildly shifting, I mean 20/25° shifts, with velocity differences all over the course and we had to decide who we had to cover and where to go on the race track.

“It was incredibly difficult, a lot of risk management we were just hyper focused the whole time. It was tremendous day, with difficult and great conditions, the race committee did a fantastic job and Mauricio obviously too, you know we had perfect communication onboard, it was excellent, we got better and better and we just made sure that we were always in phase, it worked, it feels so good!”

The podium was completed by Augie Diaz and Bruno Prada in third overall.

Full results can be found here.