Holmberg edges ahead

As Swedish Match Tour's Danish Open goes to the semi-finals

After yesterday’s 30 knot battering, summer holiday conditions returned today to Skovshoved Havn, the northern suburb of Copenhagen, where the Danish Open, the first event of the 2003-4 Swedish Match Tour is at full rev.

With the lightening of the conditions to 16-18 knots this morning, the racing also improved with crews spending less time trying to prevent their boats wiping out and more time on tactics. “It was more manageable and interesting because yesterday the margins for the skippers were quite high which meant there was no real contact,” observed Danish Open organiser Morten Lorenzen. “Today we have had quite a few contacts, so when the breeze decreases, the skippers can get more aggressive. Yesterday was more of a survival game. Today they were really fighting hard.”

In a long day out on the water, the remaining matches of the round robins series were completed by lunchtime. Topping the scoreboard on nine points apiece were America’s Cup legend Peter Gilmour and former Victory Challenge afterguard Magnus Holmberg. Due to his beating Gilmour in the round robins it was Holmberg who landed the top spot going into the semi-finals.

Local hero and double Olympic medallist Jesper Bank also squeezed through into the top four after winning one of the most aggressive matches of the day off Frenchman Luc Pillot. The race saw both parties awarded pre-start penalties. “We had a penalty in the pre-start and we are not very happy about it,” said Pillot later. “It was a port-starboard call, but it was moving and of course at the end we were close, but he could always change his course so we were quite upset about that.” Morten Lorenzen was impressed by Bank’s determination, saying that it is typical of the Dane’s tactic in regattas to start slowly and crank up as the regatta progressed.

The main complaint of the day for all the skippers was over the extreme wind shifts, that became increasingly dramatic as the wind lightened over the course of the day.

“We had big shifts and also big changes of pressure and sometime you entered into a zone of no pressure,” described Luc Pillot of Mother Nature’s complexities out on the water today. “You can see them but it is not easy to know what is going to happen after. The pressure was coming suddenly from the shore, coming down to the sea and we had to take what we had - to tack or to continue.”

Britain’s Andy Beadsworth said that the shifts tended to be very short. “You could come round the leeward mark sometimes and think you’re going to lay. At other times you could lay on the other tack.” The British team including other former GBR Challenge crewmen Matt Cornwell, Ian Budgen and Richard Sydenham had a disappointing day dropping all three races sailed. Beadsworth admitted that in the pre-start in the first race with Magnus Holmberg he had underestimated how the DS37 yacht would turn under genoa as opposed to jib (fitted on all the boats today because of the lighter winds), while he lost on a penalty to the Italian and had lost the match against Bank when the Dane had benefitted from a wind shift.

Jesper Radich who is based here in Copenhagen and knows the local conditions explained what was happening. “It is very extreme when you have such a hot surface of the land and the cold wind coming down. So the puffs get extreme,” he said adding that when the wind is westerly here and blowing off the land it obviously gets shifty, but not usually to the degree seen today where shifts of up to 50degrees were commonplace.

In a competitive regatta such as this there must be losers as well as winners and among the surprises were former Mascalzone Latino helm Paolo Cian who ended the round robins last and Match Racing World Champion Karol Jablonski who finished eighth. “We spent more time trying to get this boat going fast and we didn’t spent enough time looking for the right shifts, which is why we lost a couple of matches pretty closely. Still we are racing here against some of the best guys in the world and we just weren’t good enough to beat them,” said Jablonski.

The Danish Open has shown no end to the downturn in Jes Gram Hansen’s performance, despite racing on home waters. The Dane looked set to win the 2002-3 Swedish Match Cup earlier this year, but ended the round robins today in 10th place.

“I think in our preparation for this season, we have made a couple of mistakes,” said Gram Hansen. “We haven’t spent enough time sailing as we’ve been working so hard to find sponsorship for the sailing and to make the team stronger in terms of sponsorship and that is pretty tough when you are not succeeding in that task, then you get frustrated, and you go into a downward spiral. Winning in Ravenna was a strong performance, so we know we are capable of sailing well. In this we have led a lot of the races, but we are not quite sharp enough.”

With the round robins out of the way, the first half of the semi-finals and the petit-semis to determine positions five to eight, were held in the afternoon by which time the wind had dropped to a very shiftly 4-10 knots still out of the west.

Remarkably with two of the five semi-final races now complete the underdogs are in a strong position.

Magnus Holmberg and Jesper Radich are one all. “In the first match they protected the right side and we followed them out to the right side, but it paid for them hugely with a 30-35deg shift and then it was really hard,” described Magnus Holmberg. “We sailed quite well on the second beat but I misjudged the layline on the land and we had to tack twice again otherwise we might have had a chance…”

Peter Gilmour up against Jesper Bank joked that he had sailed consistently but come second in both his semi-final races. There was drama in the pre-start of the first race when Gilmour to leeward on starboard tack attempted to dip the Danes’ transom and misjudged it striking the stern. In the process the pulpit of Gilmour’s boat struck a glancing blow to Peter Wibroe, the observer on board Bank’s boat. Fortunately Wibroe was not injured. “We actually didn’t know we’d hit the observer,” said Gilmour apologetically. “We were sweeping across and they were turning at the same time and so they slowed down and the bow comes across fast...”

With conditions expected to be similarly light and very fluky on the final day of the regatta tomorrow, the outcome of the Danish Open is still anybody’s guess.

Round robins
Flight 17
Jesper Radich beat Karol Jablonski
Peter Gilmour beat Roy Heiner
Kelvin Harrap beat Lars Nordbjerg

Flight 18
Kelvin Harrap beat Jesper Radich
Peter Gilmour beat Lars Nordbjerg
Karol Jablonski beat Roy Heiner

Flight 19
Jesper Radich beat Peter Gilmour
Lars Nordbjerg beat Karol Jablonski
Roy Heiner beat Kelvin Harrap

Flight 20
Magnus Holmberg beat Andy Beadsworth
Jes Gram Hansen beat Paolo Cian
Jesper Bank beat Luc Pillot

Flight 21
Paolo Cian beat Andy Beadsworth
Luc Pillot beat Magnus Holmberg
Jesper Bank beat Jes Gram Hansen

Flight 22
Luc Pillot beat Paolo Cian
Jesper Bank beat Andy Beadsworth
Magnus Holmberg beat Jes Gram Hansen

Round robins final tally
1 Magnus Holmberg 9 points
2 Peter Gilmour 9 points
3 Jesper Radich 8 points
4 Jesper Bank 7 points
5 Luc Piloot 7 points
6 Kelvin Harrap 6 points
7 Andy Beadsworth 4 points
8 Karol Jablonski 4 points
9 Roy Heiner 4 points
10 Jes Gram Hansen 3 points
11 Lars Nordbjerg 3 points
12 Paolo Cian 2 points

Semi-finals
Magnus Holmberg v Jesper Radich: 1-1
Peter Gilmour v Jesper Bank: 0-2

Petit-semi finals
Karol Jablonski v Andy Beadsworth: 2-0
Kelvin Harrap v Luc Pillot: races to be sailed tomorrow