World Cup Series: Gearing up for big Tuesday

Gradually a sea breeze arrived and the first-day fleets headed out to their respective race courses. At times the sea breeze kicked up to 13 knots or more, but then a huge, dark cloud loomed over the island and threatened to spoil the party. The rain started to fall, and any hope of steady breeze for fair racing hung in the balance.

The iQFOiL men did at least complete some racing, and some of the usual suspects managed to excel despite the challenging conditions. Reigning world champion, Sebastian Koerdel (GER), scored a 1,2 from his heats. “I managed to get some good starts on the reaching starts,” said the tall German. “A couple of people were over early, and I knew I was pretty close but not too close.”

Koerdel has practised thousands of these reaching starts over the years, and has confidence in his time-on-distance judgement. “When you’re doing 25, maybe 28 knots on a reaching start and you’re half a second late, it can look like you don’t even know what you’re doing. The margins are very small. But I come from the PWA World Cup circuit, a non-Olympic background, so I’ve done a lot of reaching starts in my time.”

Like many of the 1,300 competitors in Palma, this event marks the start of the trials process to determine who will go on to represent their nation at next year’s Games, Paris 2024. Despite this, Koerdel maintains that he feels no additional pressure. “We’re windsurfers,” he laughs. “But I do see a bit more tension around the boat park. You can see things are a little bit different.”

Frenchman Adrien Mestre (FRA) won two heats and was grinning from ear to ear. He admitted to feeling the pressure of the competition, enjoying it, even. “Yeah! It’s so good, man! I like the pressure. It’s not like it’s really easy to handle but when you’re in it, you’re in it.”

The iQFOiL medal format puts a lot of load on the final day of competition, and Mestre recently profited from the sudden-death format at the Lanzarote International Regatta in February, when the Frenchman rose from 4th to 1st on the last day. “I’m looking forward to putting some big scores on the board and then be ready for the final day. It’s good to be back in competition.”

In the ILCA 7 Men, just one race completed for the Yellow Group, a race won by Kaarle Tapper (FIN). “My start was good and then I went to the left-hand side because I felt there was more pressure over there,” said the tall Finn. “It was about 10 to 12 knots and my boatspeed felt good. A nice way to start the regatta.”

Behind Tapper were some of the big hitters in this massively talented fleet. Last year’s event winner, Mickey Beckett (GBR) rolled across the line in second, just ahead of New Zealand’s Tom Saunders, the 2021 World Champion. In fourth place was the reigning Olympic Champion from Australia, Matt Wearn, who missed most of the 2022 season after catching Covid 12 months ago, and struggling for a long time to overcome its debilitating effects.

The popular Australian has bounced back in fine style for 2023. Six weeks ago he got married to Emma Plasschaert (BEL), the world-championship-winning ILCA 6 sailor, although there wasn’t much time for the newly-weds to enjoy a honeymoon. “The Europeans were coming up pretty quickly and we both had to get ready for that,” said Wearn, who finished third in Italy.

As for the opening day of Palma, Wearn was pleased to come through with a ‘counter’. “I’m happy with fourth,” he said. “As long as you don’t have any shockers, you’re probably in a good position to move forwards in the regatta.” He was relieved to have got off the line quickly without falling foul of the black flag and a potential start line disqualification. “I think the person above me and the person below me got done [by the black flag], so I was in a tight spot off the line but managed to come out of it OK.”

Racing was attempted for the ILCA 7 women, the iQFOiL women and 470 Mixed, but no scores on the board for those fleets yet. The hope for Tuesday is for better breeze, and that all 10 events will be able to get some good races on the scoreboard.

The Nacra 17 fleet will be keen to see if a winter of training has brought them any closer to the all-dominant team of 2022, the reigning Olympic, World and European Champions Ruggero Tita & Caterina Banti (ITA). “This regatta is important for us to validate what we did through the winter,” said Tita, “because we did not do a lot of volume, but did some quality training in Cagliari with the British (John Gimson and Anna Burnet), the Italians and Santi Lange (ARG) a bit too.

“We want to see how the level of the fleet has gone up, which it certainly has. I think the level of the fleet is very high now and much more even than this time last year.” The challenge for Tita is he has split responsibilities. “I will be very busy with Luna Rossa and the America’s Cup. So we will just do the key events in the Nacra, here and then Hyères, we will then train in Sardinia and then do the test event – if we manage to qualify – and the Worlds.”

Tita is delighted to be back racing in Palma. “We love it here. The first time I was here was in 2009 in the 49er and I have been here every year since then. I love it.”