A crazy day!

21/05/2022

On day four, Lake Garda’s typical “Ora” breeze built up earlier than expected and allowed both committees to run four race courses for all the fleets. With a lighter wind forecasted for tomorrow, the plan will be to give priority to the slalom races, which at the very moment were completed only on day one. Both the British Emma Wilson and the Dutch Luuc Van Opzeeland scored very consistent results at the top, and have now ulteriorly extended their leads in their respective fleets.

With an average wind stronger than any other day of racing, around 18 knots on both racing areas, Lake Garda keeps on providing interesting and spectacular races for all the competitors that entered the 2022 iQFOil European Championships. While the breeze on the southern racing area, today assigned to the men’s fleets, was steady, on the northern course, assigned to the women’s gold and silver fleets, the wind started in strong and ended up being very patchy, especially on critical areas like the starting line and the finishing line. Given the importance of the starts, many competitors pushed on the starting line, resulting in a lot of athletes being disqualified for early starts.

The British Emma Wilson (3-1-BFD-2) today was the most consistent at the top and has now extended her lead over the French Hélène Noesmoen (24-2-DNF-11) by 20 points. The game is tied in between the French and the Polish Maja Dziarnowska (13-4-1-4), now sitting in third position, both carrying a net of 45 points. The gap to fill in between the podium positions and the fourth is 40 points, while points in the rest of the top ten keep on being very tight. Nicole Van Der Velden, currently in 7th position: “Today was a really tough day out on the race course and it was really hard to score stable results, I had two good races and two bad races and I think it was hard to be in the right place all the time. It was pretty much about nailing the starts otherwise the race was over.”

The Dutch Luuc Van Opzeland (1-3-3-1) keeps on dominating the men’s European Championship, carrying a nearly 20 points advantage over the Italian Nicolò Renna (6-14-1-29) and the French Nicolas Goyard (2-DNF-6-BFD). While the top three positions have remained the same since yesterday, the rest of the top ten has seen some changing in the positions on the leaderboard, with points being less tight compared to the women’s top ten.
The forecast for Saturday, 21 May 2022, seems to be lighter than today and this might imply that the athletes will face some more slalom style of racing, with all to play for before the medal races scheduled for Sunday.