Bermuda's crew of Adam Barboza, Nick Jones and Ray DeSilva will continue their campaign to qualify for the Olympics today in the match racing phase of the World Soling Championships.

They earned the Island a fifth-place finish in the fleet racing stage and are one of eight countries to progress to the match racing phase, after Saturday's scheduled final race was cancelled because of 40-knot winds in Murcia, Spain.

The US were declared world Soling champions after finishing top of the table, with Ukraine second and Sweden third. All three have now booked their place in the 10-team Soling event at the Sydney Games.

The Bermuda trio finished 27th overall out of a high-class fleet including 25 skippers who had won either Olympic medals or world championships, but their fifth-place finish as a country was the important thing.

The other seven countries to match race for the remaining two Olympic spots are Finland, Austria, Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Japan.

Bermuda must race twice against all seven in a round-robin this week, starting with crews from Austria and Finland today, with semi-finals and a final to follow on Thursday.

The top two countries qualify for the Olympics and the third-place finishers could earn a wild card entry to the Games.

Jones felt the crew had a reasonable chance of getting to Sydney.

"We've raced against the Canadian and Brazilian crews before and it could go either way against them,'' said Jones yesterday.

"Brazil are the best in South America, so we're hoping to deal OK with Uruguay and Argentina.

"Austria and Finland know nothing about us. We were out on the water today, but they were not, so maybe the fact that we have been practising and they haven't will give us an edge.

"Adam's a good match racer and all we can do now is give it our best shot.'' Yesterday, Jones estimated winds were blowing at between eight and 15 knots, but they are expected to be stronger today.