JAPAN THE MOST CONSISTENT BUT GERMANY TAKES EARLY LEAD

With the 60-boat fleet split into two qualifying groups, the aim is always to be as consistent as possible. With all three scores counting, it was Keiju Okada and Miho Yoshioka (JPN) who enjoyed the best day on the water with scores of 1,7,5. By contrast, Wanser and Autenrieth began their campaign with a lowly 21st place but bounced back with a 2nd and 1st place in the next two heats. With teams able to discard the worst of their scores, this puts the Germans in the lead, even if they’d probably rather trade places with the Japanese who are in fourth place overall.

Autenrieth is very aware that the 21st is still hanging around his neck, but at least he and Wanser can enjoy being leaders of the World Championship this evening and continue their good work on Tuesday with two races to conclude the qualifying phase. “It didn’t feel like such a good start to the competition,” he said. “For sure the 21st is a score we want to discard, but overall a good day and a nice recovery.” Wanser joked that the poor result was what she needed to kick up a gear. “That was a good wake-up call and put some pressure on us, and I think we responded to that pressure quite well.”

A common theme in the post-race conversations was the wind shifts, being able to pick them when you wanted. There wasn’t a clear side that was favoured, it was a game of patience, waiting for the right moment to tack on the shift. Consistency was hard to find, and in second place overall are Jianyong Xu & Yahan Tu (CHN) who started out the day perfectly with a bullet, but followed up with an 18th before recovering with a third in the last race of the afternoon. 

With the breeze building from 8 knots in the first race to 12 knots by the end of the third race, the Oscar flag went up half through the second race. This is the moment when the 470 crews can switch to unlimited kinetics, pumping the rig upwind through the trapeze wire, and a lot of ooching, rocking and rolling on the downwind legs. It was just as well for Olympic bronze medallist Jordi Xammar and his crew Nora Brugman (ESP), who found themselves well back in the pack in race 2. Xammar and his former crew Nico Rodriguez were the acknowledged pioneers of a much higher-energy form of downwind sailing and Xammar needed all of his skills to salvage a 13th place from somewhere deep in the 20s.

It was that kind of day for a number of the favourites. Xammar & Brugman scores 2,13,10 to find themselves in 13th overall, while recently crowned European Champions Anton Dahlberg & Lovisa Karlsson (SWE) sit in 16th place with scores of 12,13,2. “That was a tough day out,” shrugged Dahlberg, last year’s Olympic silver medallist in Tokyo. “You had to find that small margin, a tiny advantage to be able to tack on the shifts and we were that one boatlength behind a lot of the day, which makes life very hard. Our starts were not good enough, I think we need to play it a little bit more risky tomorrow.”

Only four teams kept their results inside the top 10, the Japanese team Okada & Yoshioka, along with Marco Gradoni & Alessandra Dubbini (ITA) who sit in third overall with scores of 10,1,5, and Rodrigo Duarte & Ana Luiza Barbachan (BRA) who scored 7,1,8 to lie in 7th overall. The local Israeli team of Gil Cohen & Noam Homri (ISR) who are 11th overall with scores of 4,7,9.

For Duarte it is a remarkable return to top-flight competition. “I only did a 470 World Championship once before, I think it was 1995, when I was 15 years old,” said the 42-year-old Brazilian. “After that I campaigned in 49ers and finished Olympic sailing after Beijing 2008. Since then I finished my studies and became a harbour pilot in Brazil, which I’m still doing. Now sailing is my hobby and that makes it easier to enjoy it.” 

The other factor was his crew Barbachan. “She went to the Games in Tokyo and she is amazing, a special talent,” said Duarte. “Ana is the reason I came back to do this. And the 470 is a good boat. It’s an old boat, but very special and I enjoy it a lot, especially the downwinds. The technique is very hard to get right but I’m very happy with how our day went today.”

Principal race officer Nino Shmueli expects the breeze to take a while to settle down on Tuesday afternoon, so has set a start time of 1400 hours local time for the two races to complete the qualifying phase of the competition. Wednesday will be the start of the gold fleet racing for the top half of the fleet.

Starting Wednesday, there will be a livestream of the racing available via this link: https://www.sport5.co.il/articles.aspx?FolderID=6045&docID=418043

To get all the news, photos and updates from the racing, go to 470.org

written by Andy Rice

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Photo Credits: © Nikos Alevromytis / Int. 470 Class

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