Holmberg on top

A report from the second day of the Marseille International Match Race with photos from Gilles Martin-Raget

There was beautiful weather today in Marseille where a wind of 15-20 knots from the south-southwest was there for the first flights of the 4th Marseille International Match Race with a heavy swell in the morning which fell off slightly in the afternoon.

30 matches in 10 flights were raced today. Most of them were extremely close, with the umpires intervening a lot and contact between boats frequent... In other words, sport! But with this quality of crews racing, this was to be expected throughout the four days of the regatta.

Today's weather conditions (wind and rough seas) were very demanding on the teams during maneouvres and in tactical terms.

At the end of the day Alinghi's Peter Holmberg has moved into the lead, while the French skippers are doing well and the Italians lagging... Following in his America's Cup team-mate Ed Baird's footsteps, Peter Holmberg dominated the first day of the Round Robin by winning all his matches.

Holmberg is now neck in neck with Philippe Presti in the provisional results, but is the only skipper to not have been beaten today. Comparisons are hard when you remember that Staffan Lindberg and Sébastien Col have only raced four matches.

The four French skippers in the regatta did fairly well during today's ten flights. Philippe Presti is in the lead with five points from seven matches, closely followed by Dimitri Deruelle who surprised everyone winning four points from seven matches. Mathieu Richard got 50% by winning three matches out of six (just like the Russian Eugeny Neugodnikov) and Sébastien Col started off well with 3 matches out of 4 won.

The Italians Paolo Cian and Matteo Simoncelli have not been faring as well in the beginning of the Round Robin. The former has won two matches out of six he has raced, the latter lost all his matches.

Results

Pos	Name	Pts/Wins
1	P Holmberg	7/7
2	P Presti	5/7
3	D Deruelle	4/7
4	M Richard	3/6
4	S Col	3/4
4	E Neugodnikov	3/6
5	P Cian	2/3
5	J Gram-Hansen	2/7
6	S Lindberg	1/4
7	Simoncelli	0/6