A really good opening day to the Worlds, with light to medium sea breeze and dusk-to-dawn sunshine across the bay of Cagliari. Spain is ahead in both the men’s and women’s skiffs and Great Britain takes the early lead in the Nacra 17 fleet…
49er Men: Olympic Champions back in at the top
Fresh off a weekend of SailGP racing in Cadiz, Diego Botin and Florian Trittel (ESP) jetted across the Mediterranean into Cagliari and straight into day one of the 49er Worlds. Scores of 2,1,7 in Yellow Group of Qualifying have launched the reigning Olympic Champions right to the top of the 84-boat leaderboard.
Sharing equal points but second on tie-break are the reigning World Champions Erwan Fischer and Clement Pequin (FRA) with scores of 4,5,1 from Red Group.
Maybe it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see these big hitters so fast out of the gate, but they haven’t done a lot of time in the boat since Paris 2024. But a look down the top 10 of the 49ers after day one points to past championship-winning experience being pretty important.
Here are some other big names near the front:
4th. Three-time World Champions Bart Lambriex and Floris van der Werken (NED)
5th. Junior World Champion Richard Schultheis and Fabian Rieger (GER)
6th. Olympic silver medallists Isaac McHardie and Will McKenzie (NZL)
7th Junior World Champion Jack Ferguson and Jack Hildebrand (AUS)
8th Junior World Champion Mikolaj Staniul and Jakub Sztorch (POL)
9th Olympic Champion 2008 Jonas Warrer and Mathias Lehm (DEN)
Jonas Warrer was born in 1979, even his sail number is DEN 79, and even at the age of 46 he just can’t help but want to come back and race his favourite boat.
Meanwhile, a stand-out day for Swedish team Marius Westerlind and Olle Aronsson, finishing the day in third place with all these more experienced teams around them. The Swedes got scores of 3,4,5 in Yellow Group and apparently even had the legs on the Spanish Olympic Champions in a straight-line upwind arm wrestle.
Quotes from the day
Diego Botin on moving quickly from SailGP to the Worlds: “It’s not normal to have a world championship straight away after a SailGP weekend. We were lucky to have the the other Spanish guys helping us with the measurement and everything that was needed to do before the regatta. And yesterday we just rigged up the boat went for a quick sail. And here we are straight after our home SailGP event in Cadiz.”
Florian Trittel on such a fast exit from SailGP: “Obviously it’s not the best preparation for the World Championships. But at the same time the way we approach these world championships is that we want to jump back into the 49er after a year not having sailed the boat. And I think it’s actually quite a nice mentality to go into a Worlds with the pressure off us a little bit. Obviously we want to perform and we want to try to be as finishing as high as we can in the leaderboard but at the same time we’re just back in the 49er, trying to really enjoy every day we sail out there.”
Bart Lambriex coming back after minimal time in the boat: “I think we have room for improvement but we’re pretty happy with how we came over the finish line. We had some bad starts but we managed to get back and overall happy for our first day, to get through it like that. We didn’t sail for a year after the Games and then we started again two months ago.We need to improve on the start. We had two not so good board starts so we need to get used to that again, but I think we went fast in the right direction. That always helps.”
49erFX: When the crew becomes the helm
After a long career pulling the ropes at the front of the 49erFX for Tamara Echegoyen, Paola Barcelo has picked up the tiller at the back of the boat and, with new crew Maria Cantero, is leading the Worlds after three opening races. Scores of 5,2,1 in Yellow Group put the Spanish four points clear of French duo Mathilde Lovadina and Lou Berthomieu who hold second place as top performers from the Blue Group. Canadian sisters Georgia and Antonia Lewin-LaFrance are in third overall.
Olympic silver medallist Vilma Bobeck has teamed up with new crew Ebba Berntsson. The Swedish team ended up seventh at the end of the day. Following former teammate Rebecca Netzler’s recent retirement, Bobeck is keen to see this as a transition period as she and Berntsson get used to racing together at the top level. “We’re just learning and we haven’t trained properly prior to this event to expect anything,” said Bobeck. “I think we overachieved today from what we initially thought and we’re really happy with the comms inside the boat and kind of how we’re handling situations. So I think we’re just open-minded about it and actively talking about it. I think that’s a good first step to just take things as they come.”
Great start for Great Britain in the Nacra 17
John Gimson and Anna Burnet have been fast out of the blocks on day one of the Nacra 17 Worlds in Cagliari, the British team taking a five-point lead at the head of the 40-boat fleet. Just seven months together as a team, but both experienced Olympians in their own right, Sinem Kurtbay and Alican Kaynar won race two and put together a solid day to sit in second place overall, six points clear of the Olympic silver medallists from Argentina, Mateo Majdalani and Eugenia Bosco. Local favourites Gianluigi Ugolini and Maria Giubilei sit in fifth place ahead of fellow Italians Federico Figlia di Granara and Caterina Sedmak.
Quotes from the day
Anna Burnet: “It was a good day but for us it’s just about surviving the qualifying. Obviously that went well for us today but we don’t want to use all our luck up in the qualifying. We got two good starts and one bad start and with the bad start we managed to get our way back into this race well.”
Sinem Kurtbay, on the ‘new’ pairing with former helm and now crew, Alican Kaynar: “I think it’s been going super well, I think we’ve improved a lot faster than I expected. The fact that Alican has been a helm, that’s probably the explanation for how fast we improved to the level that we’re at now. I mean it’s just been one day, we can’t claim anything obviously, but I think the training has been going really well.”
written by event reporter Andy Rice
