Kiwi sailor in medal hunt at worlds

New Zealand Laser sailor Thomas Saunders continues to push for a podium finish at the world championships warm-up event in Denmark.

Saunders finished the latest two races in Aarhus 10th and first on Friday (NZ time).

That has him five points adrift of Australian leader Matthew Wearn.

Saunders has had only one result outside the top 10 in the 62-boat fleet.

‘‘I’m really happy with the way I’m sailing and it’s starting to show in the results,’’ he said.

‘‘I just need to focus on one race at a time and hopefully I’ll be in medal contention come the medal race [on Sunday].

‘‘Today was 8-15 knots and very shifty; a game of snakes and ladders. It was important to have options off the start line and then backing yourself with what you saw. I just tried to keep a level head with the highs and lows and managed to consolidate a couple of good results. Hopefully more of the same tomorrow.’’

Rio bronze medallist Sam Meech continued his climb up the table after his opening day shocker. A fourth and ninth lifted him to seventh on the Laser table and a chance of being around for the medal race.

‘‘I managed to get a couple of reasonable results so it was nice to move up the leaderboard a little bit,’’ Meech said.

‘‘I’m still going to need quite a bit to salvage a good result here but I’m really enjoying the racing.’’

Gemma Jones and Jason Saunders moved back to second in the foiling Nacra 17 catamaran class after a strong day where they finished their three races seventh, second and fourth.

They are just four points behind new leaders Lin Ea Cenholt and Christian Lubeck of Denmark.

All of the crews are trying to get to grips with the new foiling Nacras that will be used at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics - they were nonfoiling in Rio - and complicating things for Jones and Saunders is the fact they teamed up again only last weekend for their first regatta together since last year’s Olympics where they finished fourth.

It is a small fleet of only 14 boats in Aarhus, largely because other Nacra sailors haven’t yet taken possession of the new boats. New Zealand’s other top Nacra crew, Liv Mackay and Micah Wilkinson, receive their new boat only a week out from next month’s Nacra world championships.

‘‘Jason and I are still learning about the boat and getting back after not sailing together for a year,’’ Jones said.

‘‘This is a learning regatta. We are trying stuff and not really taking it too seriously, although we still want to do well.

‘‘We can take a lot from today. The first race we were pretty slow but in the next we were a lot faster so we are learning every day.

‘‘Tomorrow I’m sure it will be shifty, like Aarhus usually is, so it will be about staying in the game, not taking too many risks and trying to be consistent.’’