Teariki wins regatta in Vanuatu

By ELLEN TIAMU
A YOUNG Papua New Guinean has won the recent regatta out of a group of other Pacific Islands representatives.
Port Moresby Grammar School student, 17-year-old Teariki Numa, blitzed the best youth sailors from the Pacific to claim the 2017 Pacific Youth Championships in Port Vila, Vanuatu, last weekend. The Pacific championship was run immediately after the week-long 2017 ENP (Emerging Nations Programme).
This is the second time Teariki has won this event. At the 2015 Oceania championships in Fiji, he surprised everyone, including the strong PNG contingent of five sailors and coach, by winning that year’s youth championships. The youth championships in Vanuatu were conducted in very trying conditions with fluctuating winds ranging from 5knots to 15knots and oscillated at more than 20 degrees during the 12 race regatta.
Teariki not only did well against his other wantoks from the Pacific but also upstaged his older sibling and 2015 Pacific Games silver medalist, 19-year-old Rose-Lee Numa.
Rose-Lee finished first in the female division and fourth overall. The youth championships is a one class event whereby both male and female sail in the same fleet.
Prior to the event, Teariki also represented PNG in the 2017 World sailing ENP (Emerging Nations Programme) in which four scholarship places were on offer. Sailors from the Cook Islands, Guam, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG and New Caledonia took part in the Emerging Nations Programme.
A six-race selection trials regatta was conducted at the end of the ENP performance clinic by world sailing experts to grade the sailors. Teariki won all six races with a display of masterful strategies and tactics to out-sail his opponents in very tricky conditions to win all the races to rank as top youth sailor in the Pacific.
The week-long programme saw sailors from Cook Islands, Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu, PNG and New Caledonia take part in the World Sailing selection trials for four World Sailing scholarship places. The scholarships will be officially announced in August this year and it is anticipated that two female sailors from Samoa and Cook Islands, plus two male sailors from Fiji and PNG will be confirmed.
Emerging Nations Programme (ENP) is a World Sailing developed pathway, aimed to help raise the level of sailors and coaches in under-developed nations prepare towards qualifying for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
The ENP targets both sailors and coaches and Teariki was accompanied by his mentor and older sibling, Rose-Lee Numa. She was also his coach.
Teariki said: “I had a very difficult year last year where I was juggling school with training, and it was disappointingly evident when I attended the World Youth championships in Auckland in December.
However, I have stepped up my training this year where I visit the PNG High Performance Training centre twice a week and work on sail training on weekends.”
“My ultimate goal is to represent PNG in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and to eventually get there, I want to attend this year’s Youth World Championships in China in December.”
“I am taking every opportunity leading up to the Tokyo Olympics one step at a time,” he said.