Sweden’s Johnie Berntsson spearheaded a high-calibre quartet into the Bermuda Gold Cup quarter-finals after dominating the second-stage repechage in Hamilton Harbour.
Berntsson, skippering Berntsson Sailing, produced a clinical showing on the water, topping the repechage leaderboard with six victories from his seven matches to safely punch his ticket into the knockout phase.
Joining the Swedish veteran in the last eight are France’s Pauline Courtois (Match in Pink), American world number one Chris Poole (Riptide Racing), and Swiss skipper Eric Monnin (Swiss Match Racing), who all navigated the high-stakes repechage hurdle to complete the quarter-final grid.
For Poole, progressing through the repechage provided an immediate reprieve after narrowly missing out on automatic qualification by a single point during the opening phase.
The four repechage qualifiers now advance to the third stage, where they face the four crews who earned direct passage from the round-robin stage.
Britain's Christian Hamilton (Khumbu Racing) topped that opening phase with eight wins, emerging from a congested four-way tie alongside France's Aurélien Pierroz (Match Again), Sweden's Oskar Engström (Team Libros), and Denmark's Jeppe Borch (Borch Matchrace).
The regatta now transitions into the sudden-death knockout phase, with first-to-three points quarter-final matches deciding which four skippers contest the semi-finals in pursuit of the historic King Edward VII Gold Cup.
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