MacGregor through

Racing gets underway at Kieler Woche

With highly competitive racing in the Olympic Classes at the sixth event of the 2008-09 ISAF Sailing World Cup, the 127th Kieler Woche started on Saturday morning.

“We scheduled three races for today, but they were in not very easy conditions. We are happy to have held two races in most of the classes," said Jobst Richter, Chairman of Kieler Woche Race Committee.

It is not the first time Kieler Woche has held a women’s match racing event, but it is the first time that it has been part of the ISAF Sailing World Cup and Kiel is proud to host the first appearance of the brand new Elliott 6m, the boat selected for the Women’s Match Race event at the 2012 Olympic Games in Weymouth, UK. The first flights of the women’s match race started today. The 21 teams are split into three groups for a Round Robin series but only the first two groups could sail today.

In group A, the #1 team on the ISAF World Cup standings, Lucy MacGregor, Nicole Douglass and Nina Curtis (GBR) made the best of it to collect five wins out of six races. Only against Anne-Claire Le Berre from France did the British team lose a point. At the top of Group A, MacGregor has now qualified for the quarter-final with Nicky Souter and her Australian team who also posted five wins and one loss. Asked how she found the new Elliott boats, MacGregor said: “Overall our first impression is good. There are a few things that are not what we are used to but overall our first impression is good.” “The boats are sporty, fun and comfortable to sail” added German sailor Svenja Puls.

Designer of the new women's match race boat, New Zealander Greg Elliott himself came to Kiel to see the boats on their European debut. “We are very close to the final trim of the boats," he said. "We are at the stage that we discuss things like the best place for the jib cleat or the best system for the hiking straps. It has been a long road to get these first boats ready and we are now keen to get feedback from the sailors so that we can make them better. We are working closely with ISAF to finalise the class rules and ensure we have the best product possible.”

In the Laser Radial fleet, Beijing gold medallist Anna Tunnicliffe had a bad start to her regatta in the first race of the day with an OCS, but with a second in race two the leader of the Laser Radial World Cup Standings is back on track. “I was on the wrong side at the first start and with many boats around I was over the line”, Anna Tunnicliffe explained later. Tunnicliffe has begun her campaign for the 2012 Olympic Games and has completed all five of the previous World Cup events in the Laser Radial, but a change into the women’s match race could be a possibility for the American.

In the Star class it was the day for the German teams. With only one race on the scoreboard Robert Stanjek and Markus Koy (GER) came in first in front of former Olympic Tornado sailor Johannes Polgar and Tim Kröger (GER). Mark Mendelblatt and Mark Strube (USA) finished third.

In the Men’s 470 the British team James Rusden and Rob Partridge took the first win of the day in the yellow fleet but came fifth in the second race to end the day in fifth overall. The German team, Lucas Zellmer and Heiko Seelig had the best day, posting bullets in both their races to place at the top of the leaderboard.

For Sunday there expect low winds below five knots in Kiel.

Besides the ISAF Sailing World Cup competition, Kieler Woche has even more to offer. Three high class international championships (the X-35 Worlds, the X-41 Europeans and the SAP Europeans of the 505) and the virtual Kieler Woche online are other highlights of this year’s event, which again brings together all varieties of the sport from cutter sailing to surfboard, dinghy and offshore yachts, disabled sailing events and the famous windjammer parade.

Full results here