Her uncle, Olympic legend Bruce Kendall, also enjoyed a stellar career, winning bronze at the 1984 Los Angeles Games before claiming gold at Seoul in 1988.<\/p>\n
Bright, based at the Manly Sailing Club at Whangapar\u0101oa near Auckland, dominated the world junior regatta from the outset, winning 11 of the 20 qualifying course and slalom races to earn a direct spot in the winner-take-all final.<\/p>\n
The final was anything but straightforward, with the up-and-coming Bright drawing on her sporting pedigree to navigate some tense moments.<\/p>\n
The Kiwi made a slow start, allowing Norway\u2019s Maya Gysler to take the early lead. With conditions light and competitors pumping hard downwind, Bright gradually clawed her way back into contention.<\/p>\n
She made her move at the final mark, sweeping past Gysler before holding her nerve through the closing reaches to secure her first world title.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very exciting final race,\u201d Bright said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came in a bit early to the start, so I didn\u2019t have much speed coming off the line. It was quite light, and we were pumping a lot downwind. I tried to hook in and save my energy as much as I could.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looked like she was quite far in the lead, so I was thinking I was just going to come second.\u201d<\/p>\n
She closed the gap on her opponent with a late charge to seal the title.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty surreal to call myself under-23 world champion,\u201d a thrilled Bright said.<\/p>\n
Now, a new generation of the Kendall family is making waves on the water.<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Her uncle, Olympic legend Bruce Kendall, also enjoyed a stellar career, winning bronze at the 1984 Los Angeles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620939,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[71471,806,5822,13982,12131,26588,194,111,139,69,90,213,223,2563,810,305662,6202,377],"class_list":["post-620938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aimee","tag-as","tag-bright","tag-continues","tag-dynasty","tag-junior","tag-kiwi","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-sports","tag-the","tag-title","tag-up","tag-windsurfing","tag-wins","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}