Tornado Europeans preview

Mark Bulkeley looks at next weeks championship, who the runners and riders are and the recent rule changes to the Tornado

On Monday over 60 Tornados will gather in Vastervik; Sweden, for their European Championships, with 10 races scheduled through to a finish on Saturday. Vastervik is a small holiday town on the east coast of Sweden; about 3 hours drive south of Stockholm. Not normally known for its racing heritage, it is in fact the home of Marstrom Composites who build the Tornados, and over the past 15 years have turned the class into a virtual one design.

In what is typically a quiet year; post Olympics, the Tornado class has undergone some significant changes which came into effect after Athens 2004. Following a Ballot of the class association a Carbon mast was introduced to the class, along with some minor rule changes to encourage a more one design fleet, as well as to reduce costs (Some would argue that introducing a carbon mast and reducing costs are mutually exclusive!). As a result of these changes it has been quite a busy year and all of the top teams from last time round are back, including medallists from Athens.

With the Rig changes and some restrictions in sail cloth, notably the banning of T-fibre (a laminated cloth made by Cuben Fibre which Leigh and I together with the Americans and Mitch Booth developed for Athens) 2005 has been a busy year with a complete re design on mainsails needed to match the new Carbon Masts. Most of the fleet have been working with Pablo Soldano of Ulmann sails, who has a large share of the market for mainsails and jibs, and has been working with us closely this year. With so much going on with the masts and mainsails the rest of the sail plan has stayed the same with the majority of the fleet still using Gran Segel spinnakers.

Apart from the technical aspects of the change to carbon masts there have also been some subtle changes in the way the boat sails and feels, although less than you might imagine. The new masts are 7kg lighter and this has had an effect on both pitching moment and also the way the boat ‘pops’ a hull. The first thing we noticed was the hull rises much smoother in the marginal wiring conditions and you have more control over this aspect, whereas before with the aluminium masts it would suddenly pop and then you would be straight into twin wiring. The biggest difference though is when the breeze gets up and you turn the corner to go downwind. The boat doesn’t stop in the waves and you can push things much harder, as of yet no one has made twin wiring downhill work in racing, but it is one area where I can see some testing over the winter might prove fruitful.

It has also been an interesting year for the British teams, after a winter shake up new teams emerged at the start of the season. Leigh McMillan is now sailing with Will Howden and started the season strongly with a 3rd in Palma, and continued this form into the Worlds where they narrowly missed out on winning, finally being pushed into second after a last night protest by the Spanish for redress. Rob Wilson and I teamed up and had a great start to the season with strong results in Palma, and a 2nd in Hyeres, but had a difficult week at the worlds and finished down the fleet and were very disappointed with our performance. Hugh Styles returned to the fleet after a failed last ditch attempt to qualify for Athens in the Laser and has sailed this year with ex 470 helm Graham Vials, however they have now parted company Hugh is now sailing with 49er helm Alistair Richardson and it will be interesting to see how this new paring go. The most improved British team this year are Andrew Walsh and Ed Barney, who finished a very credible 14th at the Worlds and have been training with us and the German Pairing of Yohannes Polgar and Florian Spalteholz, they have also recently finished 6th at the Formula 18 worlds and will be looking to build on there recent successes here in Sweden.

In the International fleet, all of the big names have continued, some with crew changes, but generally it is a very strong fleet that has gathered this year. Darren Bundock has teamed up with Aaron Worral, and after setting the early season pace had a disappointing worlds, but is a very experienced and talented sailor and I predict they will definitely be a team to watch here. Among the other top teams are newly crowned World Champions Fernando Echiavarri and Anton Paz of Spain who have been the most consistent team of the season, with solid results all year including winning Spa Regatta just before the world championships. The bronze medallists at the worlds were the French duo of Xavier Revil and Christophe Espagnon who have stepped up to take the French number 1 spot, this team won Hyeres week and are a new pairing for this season.

There are also the Gold and Silver medal winning teams from Athens here, and although they may not have done very much sailing this year, you can guarantee they will be up there at the end of the week. John Lovell and Charlie Ogletree have been busy this year defending there little Americas cup title and double Olympic Gold medallists Roman Hagara and Hans Peter Steinacher of Austria are always a force to be reckoned with. In fact the only medallist missing is Santiago Lange who is taking a year out to concentrate on Americas cup commitments. However his crew Carlos Espinola has formed an unlikely partnership with another former windsurfing gold medallist, Aaron Macintosh. These two started sailing together for a bit of fun at the worlds and surprised everyone with a solid top ten result and could cause an upset here.

None of the top teams have raced or sailed here before and there are no Swedish teams at the front end of the fleet, so it could be an interesting week. Form wise this week I expect that it will be very close racing and depending on the winds we get very close at the end of the week. If the wind blows there is a much more established pecking order in the fleet, with ten boats that can stretch their legs and I would expect Mitch Booth to put in a good performance. Mitch has been working in Vastervik for the last few weeks getting his Volvo Extreme 40 on the water and probably has spent the most time here out of the fleet. My tip for the week would be Darren Bundock to win the open championship and Fernando to make it a double by adding the European title to his World title, however with only one discard in a ten race series there is a fine balance between pushing it hard and scoring an OCS or two and tumbling down the results board. It is therefore very important to build a consistent series and leave yourself with a discard in hand, just in case the winds turn light and fickle. One of the characteristics of Tornado racing in very light winds is that everyone goes very similar speeds, the boats are slow to tack and you tend to get very big splits in the fleet, this can lead to very big swings in positions as the wind shifts. It is often the races where you finish 15th but recover from a 40 round the windward mark that you look back on as your most important races.

As for Rob and I, we have had some time off after the Worlds and have put this time to use by relaxing and reflecting on the good and bad bits of our pre worlds preparation. We are now feeling refreshed and hungry again and are looking forward to getting into the racing on Monday, before then though we will be training with our regular training group out on the course area trying to get a handle on the local effects. We would also like to thank our sponsors as we have been very fortunate this year to have the support of Jeep who have been sponsoring us and provide a vehicle for us to tow all of our kit around. We would also like to thank our other sponsors; Adidas Eyewear, Holt, Marlow Ropes and of course UK Sport Lottery.

Entry list (64):

Darren Bundock (1971) / Aaron Worrall (1970)	AUS 967
Roman Hagara (1966) / Hans Peter Steinacher (1968)	AUT 380
Thomas Zajac (1985) / Thomas Czajka (1985)	AUT 381
Carolijn Brouwer (1973) / Sebastien Godefroid (1971)	BEL 7
Mauricio Santa Cruz (1979) / Joao Carlos (1962)	BRA 37
Alain Dubuc (1956) / Eve-Marie L'Abbé (1975)	CAN 2
Oskar Johansson (1977) / Kevin Stittle (1979)	CAN 7
Peder Ronholt (1974) / Mads Moller (1976)	DEN 1
Fernando Echavarri (1972) / Antón Paz (1976)	ESP 1
Javier Padron (1986) / Miguel Perez (1978)	ESP 104
Enrique Garcia de Soto (1974) / Pablo Pelayo (1981)	ESP 2004
Antonio Rivas (1974) / Fabian Escudé (1975)	ESP 23
Kalevi Kostiainen (1967) / Hannu Järvelä (1973)	FIN 2
Xavier Revil (1971) / Christophe Espagnon (1976)	FRA 1
Yann Guichard (1974) / Alexandre Guyader	FRA 2
Baptiste Balzeau (1983) / Gael Ledoux (1983)	FRA 276
Billy Besson (1981) / Arnaud Jarlegan (1976)	FRA 281
Matthieu Souben (1982) / Gurvan Bontemps (1980)	FRA 282
Francois Morvan (1983) / Matthieu Vandame (1982)	FRA 291
Francois Gabart (1983) / Romain David (1982)	FRA 293
Antoine Koch (1978) /	FRA 297
Rob Wilson (1975) / MarkBulkeley (1979)	GBR 420
Andrew Walsh (1982) / Edward Barney (1982)	GBR 430
Hugh Styles (1974) /	GBR 434
Leigh Mc Millan (1980) / William Howden (1977)	GBR 436
Fridtiof Unger (1981) / Philipp Wetzig (1979)	GER 1000
Robin Rettberg (1985) / Niels Löffler (1985)	GER 1021
Gunter Mörtl (1950) / Matthias Behla (1961)	GER 1024
Fabian Will (1973) / Sten Höpfner (1973)	GER 1039
Patrick Egger (1982) / Dominic Stahl (1978)	GER 1048
Christina Loweg (1984) / Florian Loweg (1983)	GER 1052
Jurgen Tiemann (1945) / Justus Tiemann (1990)	GER 1069
Jens-H Thiele (1984) / Daniel Sulberg (1985)	GER 1080
Tino Mittelmeier (1984) / Niko Mittelmeier (1981)	GER 1082
Johannes Polgar (1977) / Florian Spalteholz (1977)	GER 1087
Roland Gaebler (1964) / Gunnar Struckmann (1981)	GER 1094
Iordanis Paschalides (1967) / Konstantinos Trigonis (1970)	GRE 7
Allesio Zucchi (1979) / Lorenzo Fantoni (	ITA 11
Matteo Nicolucci (1972) / Filippo Zumbo	ITA 231
Francesco Marcolini (1971) / Edoardo Bianchi	ITA 257
Ferrarese Simone (1988) / Pallara Luca (1977)	ITA 260
Paolo Clemente (1963) / Fabrizio Clemente (1965)	ITA 263
Vincenzo Sorrentino (1978) / Giorgio Colombo (1982)	ITA 5
Mitch Booth (1963) / Herbert Priscila Dercksen (1973)	NED 1
Ruurd van Wieren (1968) / Pieter Ruitenburg	NED 142
Vincent Huntelman (1974) / Mischa Heemskerk (1974)	NED 162
Wouter Samama (1981) / Jeroone Van Leeuwen (1981)	NED 888
Piotr Kowalewski (1963) / Maciej Klosowicz (1981)	POL 1
Adam Skomski (1971) / Zbigniew Gutkowski (1973)	POL 7
Pawel Walencik (1969) / Ewa Gorska	POL 9
Diogo Cayolla (1974) / Frederico Cerveira (1986)	POR 1
Enrique Figueroa (1964) / Jorge Hernandez	PUR 1
Alexey Chekrygin (1983) / Sergey Bogatkin (1980)	RUS 27
Sergei Dziembaev / Oleg Riasanzev	RUS 7
Andrey Kirilyuk (1968) / Valery Ushkov (1971)	RUS 97
Karl Sunesson (1975) / Erik Andersson (1984)	SWE 1
Göran Marström (1942) / Thomas Persson (1976)	SWE 191
Hans Wallén (1961) / Anders Bengtsson	SWE 201
Pavlo Kalinchev (1981) / Olexiy Kholodnitskiy (1979)	UKR 11
Stanislav Golimbievskyy (1973) /Alexander Meninkov (1974)	UKR 21
Robbie Daniel (1962) / Mike Hoey (1966)	USA 804
John Lovell (1967) / Charlie Ogletree (1967)	USA 808
Michael Grandfield (1949) / Mike Kuschner (1987)	USA 813
Donald Thinschmidt (1984) / Andrew Wierda (1986)	USA 838