Bermuda narrowly missed out on a place in the last 16 in the team racing event at the Optimist World Championships in Thailand at the weekend.

The island suffered defeat against five-times team champions Singapore in their opening qualifying race on Sunday but bounced back with victory over Austria to stave off elimination.

Bermuda’s good fortunes continued when they beat Croatia in their third race to keep alive their chances of advancing.

However, those hopes were dashed when Bermuda lost to France and bowed out of the double-elimination competition.

The United States, the defending champions, beat China in a hard-fought best-of-three final series yesterday to retain their team racing title. En route to the final the US beat Ireland, Germany, Thailand and Singapore.

With the team championship completed, attention returns to the individual world championships series which resumes today and continues until Thursday in the Gulf of Thailand.

The fleets will be split into four groups today based on their rankings in the preceding qualifying series.

Christian Ebbin was Bermuda’s highest finisher in the qualifiers in 164th closely followed by Sebastian Kempe in 166th and Rian Geraghty-McDonnell in 170th. Jordan Etemadi finished in 209th and Jack Hildebrand 248th. Marco Gradoni, of Italy, topped the overall leaderboard after the completion of the six-race qualifying series, which enabled competitors to discard their worst score.

The Optimist World Championships, being hosted by the Royal Varuna Yacht Club, boasts a record-breaking 281 sailors from 62 countries.