IAN WILLIAMS admits it would be “incredible” to become the first sailor to win FIVE world match racing titles.

The Lymington-based former solicitor has a slender lead over defending champion Taylor Canfield as his GAC Pindar team prepares for the penultimate stage of the 2014 Alpari World Match Racing Tour, which started this week.

Williams, who has won the tour four times in the last seven years, has seen his 21-point lead over the young Australian’s US One team whittled down to six after finishing second in each of the last two stages.

But he is hopeful of adding to the back-to-back titles he won in 2007-08 and 2011-12 ahead of the Argo Group World Cup in Bermuda, the sixth of the tour’s seven stages.

“I think we have a good chance but we’ll need a bit of luck along the way,” said Williams, who is yet to finish out of the top two this year.

But Canfield’s two wins and the fact that the leaderboard is based on the sailor’s best five stage results, including next month’s finale in Malaysia, means the momentum is with the Aussie.

Williams, 37, said: “It’s quite familiar territory for us to take a lead in the Tour and then have it whittled down as less consistent teams are able to start dropping their bad regattas. “As ever, it will come down to two or three teams at the final event in Malaysia which is the regatta that we build towards throughout the year.”

Williams admits that losing in the last race to Canfield last year has made his team “hungrier to win”

“They also have a good chance and will certainly be in the mix come Malaysia,” he said. “They tend to prefer the four-man boats so hopefully we will continue to have the advantage over them in the bigger five-man man boats that we sail in Malaysia [and Germany and Sweden).”

For Williams, the highlight of this year’s tour was the second of his two wins, in Poland at the beginning of August.

“We last attended the event in 2005, when it was a grade one event, so to go back nine years later and see how it had developed, and then win it, was fantastic,” he said.

The stages are all unique, with the award for the winner of the Argo Group World Cup being the King Edward VII Gold Cup, the oldest match racing trophy in the world, as well as 25 points (22 are available for the runner-up).

But Williams has only won once in Bermuda, where the teams race 33-foot International One Design yachts and that was back in 2006.

“It has very different boats to the rest of the Tour,” says Williams. “The IOD is a very, old heavy design which is difficult to manoeuvre. Getting to grips with how the boat handles is the key to doing well there.”

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