Finland comes good

Sari Multala pulls into the lead at the Laser Radial Worlds

In cold but sunny weather with oscillating winds between 15 and 28 knots the Laser Radial sailors at the Audi Laser World Championship 2012 in Boltenhagen finished the last races of their qualifying series today before being divided into the gold and silver fleets for the finals. The choppy waves out on the Wohlenberger Wiek proved challenging and again there were several capsizes.

The two Finnish competitors seemed to feel right at home in these conditions, and both scored a first and second in today's races. This pushed Sari Multala from fourth to first place overall, three points ahead of Lija Xu (CHN) who is steady in second place. Team GBR's Alison Young has dropped to third place with a ninth and fourth place in the yellow fleet.

With the exception of the very first race of the qualifying series Marit Bouwmeester (NED), currently seventh overall, is achieving consistent top 10 results and will be trying to close the 12 point gap between her and Multala during tomorrow's gold fleet races. Josefin Olsson (SWE), who had been working her way up in the results capsized on the last down wind of the second race, losing two points. Righting her boat fast enough meant she still finished eighth in the blue fleet.

In the strong winds Ireland's Annalise Murphy is showing her strength and repeated her results from yesterday with a first and second place. Improving 12 places she is now 15th overall following a disastrous first day of racing when she was 65th and 33rd. Similarly the conditions seem to suit Paige Railey (USA) who is only two places and one point behind Murphy with much more stable top 10 results over the last two days.

Full results here