Open BIC World Cup in Carnac, France

by Benoit Tréguilly 25 Jul 2008 11:24 BST 19-21 July 2008

The O’pen World Cup was a great success ! Organised by BIC Sport and the French Sailing Federation (FFV), with support from major telecomms company, Orange, and the Conseil General du Morbihan, it welcomed 65 competitors from 8 countries to the Yacht Club de Carnac, Brittany, France.

Two years after its release, the BIC O’pen, is more and more popular all over the world and continues to attract more and more kids who want to race with maximum fun. The innovative race formats inspired from the pro windsurfi ng scene keep the kids excited and interested! You can see it on their faces after the races ! During this World O’pen Cup, 4 different race format were used : downwind slalom, crosswind slalom, adventure racing and O’pen Cross (including freestyle moves). Kids raced and had a lot of fun at the same time!

The success of this World Cup event is also due to the simplicity of the rules : all competitors of all levels could participate, no protests were accepted, but the jury was on the water to check and in case of fault, the offending competitors had to perform a penalty 360°. This rule worked very well and gave the event a very good spirit. As with the pro riders,there were plenty of capsizes during the slalom races, but no problem, 10 seconds later, most kids were back up and racing again !

10 races were run, in a full range of conditions from Force 1 to 4 (5-18 knots) with competitors allowed 2 discards. In the end, the World O’pen Cup 2008 was won by the Brazilian prodigy Denis Tassone, followed by Portuguese rider Santiago Sampaio and the swede Oscar Pantzare. It’s specially worth noting the great performance by Constanza Seguel Tagle from Chile, who won the girl’s event and managed to finish in 2nd place in the final overall rankings.

All the riders were very excited and will go home with some fantastic memories of this World Cup !

Forthcoming events:
EurO’pen Cup at Nautica Sebina on 29-31 August in Sulzano/Italy
German O’pen Cup on 29-31 August in Kiel/Germany
US O’pen Cup at New Bedford Community Boating on 16 August in New Bedford/USA

See you there for more super-energized sailing !

Results:

Boys over 12 (37 competitors):
1st Denis TASSONE (Brazil)
2nd Santiago SAMPAIO (Portugal)
3rd Oscar PANTZARE (Sweden)

Boys under 12 (15 competitors):
1st Tom LAPERCHE (France)
2nd Gregory CHARPENTIER (France)
3rd Jules DUCELIER (France)

Girls (13 competitors):
1st Constanza SEGEL TAGLE (Chili)
2nd Liede LAMBRIEX (Holland)
3rd Elodie MILLANVOIS (France)