Tornado World Championship at Nautical Club of Thessaloniki - Overall
by Maria Tsaousidou 6 Sep 2017 11:33 BST
30 August - 5 September 2017
Dany Paschalidis and Petros Konstantinidis win the Tornado Worlds © Nikos Pantis
Dany Paschalidis and Petros Konstantinidis from Greece are the 2017 Tornado World Champions. Zdenek Pavlis and 17-year-old Michaela Pavlisova from the Czech Republic are the 2017 Tornado Worlds Mixed champions.
It is the seventh title in a row for Dany Paschalidis who accepted the challenge and sailed without Kostas Trigonis and instead with a young promising talent, Petros. It was Petro's first ride on this boat. They scored seven bullets, a second and a fourth place.
Zdenek Pavlis and Michaela Pavlisova's fight for this title has now been ten years. After their excellent performance this year they made it, finishing also 7th in the overall category.
Second overall were the Hellenic Police team of Nikolaos Mavros and Alexandros Tagaropoulos, just 8 points from the top, who managed to achieve a goal and get on the podium after last year's misfortune. Third place went to Germany and the father and son team of Bob and Marc Baier.
Kostas Trigonis, our multiple World champion and Stavros Tavoularis, from Greece finished 4th and 5th place goes to Australia's Brett Burvill, the Windrush Tornado boat builder and Max Puttman, a young sailmaker from Perth.
Second in the Mixed went to the president and his wife, Jürgen and Sarah Jentsch who lost their lead in the last race. Third mixed went to Markus Betz and Monika Schuster from Germany after a tight battle for the win today.
The conditions on the final day were very tricky. The wind did not seem promising due to the morning clouds but a northerly breeze came in at around 3pm. Many wind shifts though resulted in a race that was abandoned. The Race Officer decided to wait for the wind to get more stable and managed to start the one and only race of the day that included many shifts in direction and strength (from 6 to 12 knots).
Congratulations to our winners, to all participants, to the Race Committee for their amazing job, as well as to the Nautical Club of Thessaloniki and the Sailing Club of Thessaloniki for hosting such a great event for the 50th anniversary of our class.
www.tornado-class.org/events/world-championships-2017