Battle of the giants

Riccardo Bonadeo's maxi Rrose Selavy leads class 0 at the Giraglia Rolex Cup

Riccardo Bonadeo scored a third consecutive second place aboard his Maxi Rrose Selavy to win Class 0 of the inshore series of the Giraglia Rolex Cup in St Tropez.

Bonadeo would have been unhappy to have lost out to the C&C 61 Grampus, the 1975-vintage yacht which won two races in a row and put the larger Maxis to shame on corrected time.

Bonadeo and Grampus's owner Carlo Puri Negri traded mock insults while they waited for the results on corrected time to come through. "I hope we have not upset them too much," said Puri Negri modestly afterwards. "The conditions were good for us: flat water, not too many waves. We would not have been so good against the newer boats if there had been big waves as we are a lot heavier than them."

Whatever the complexities of the racing under corrected time, as a straight fight on the water it doesn't get much better than the racing witnessed off
St Tropez today. Ernesto Gismondi's Frers 65 Edimetra won the start along with Carlo Perrone's Virtuelle, with Olympic gold medallist Thierry Peponnet bagging a perfect port-end start.

Gradually, the bigger Maxis hauled their way past the front runners in a building 15-knot breeze. Pierluigi Loro Piana's 85-foot Reichel-Pugh Maxi, My Song, rounded just seconds ahead of Idea and Sagamore. Sagamore tacked so close underneath Idea that their rigs almost clashed, but both crews held their nerve.

It would have been yet more disaster for Idea's owner Raffaele Raiola, who suffered a nasty grounding on the rocks during Tuesday's race. Fortunately he finished that race in good shape and was on good form again today, although it may take some time to get his brand new 82-foot Reichel-Pugh design fully on the pace.

Entreprendre, the former 1985/86 Whitbread Race winner, did not fare so well in the windier conditions today, but still did enough to secure third place overall in Class 0 ahead of the glamour Maxis.

continued on page 2...