Volvo 29er European Championship at the Royal Danish Yacht Club - Day 3
by 29er Class & Royal Danish Yacht Club 3 Jul 08:21 BST
27 June - 5 July 2022
The third day at the Volvo 29er European Championship in Rungsted, Denmark offered a solid, but shifty breeze from the morning, leading to some mixed results throughout the fleet. This added some extra excitement to the last races in the qualification series for the Gold, Silver, Bronze and Emerald fleet.
The 29er sailors were in general happy for the bit more wind of around 8-10 knots. "For us, it was better today than the other days. The wind was very strong though, but that there was more of it was fun! We did okay, so it was great," said Jenny Pollen and Julie Sverdrup from Norway. The shifty winds typically gave an advantage on the starting line, causing sailors to gather around one side of the line. Despite the fact, that black flags were set to "tame" the fleet, there were a number of general recalls.
Dehn-Toftehøj in the lead for the 3rd day
The shifty winds also caused some ups and downs for the top sailors. Jens-Christian and Jens-Philip Dehn-Toftehøj from KDY are still in the lead despite the more points collected to the scoreboard than earlier in the championships (8, 11 and 3). In second place is the Spanish team Yoel Hernández Peña and Alvaro Alonso Ortega, and in third place are George Lee Rush and Seb Menzies from New Zealand. Right outside the top-3 is the best U-17 team with Frenchman Tom Goron and Mael Clochard in fourth place. Best female crew are the sisters Sara Momplet Baixauli and Isabel Momplet Baixauli from Spain. They are currently in 14th place overall.
9 qualifying races at the European Championships have now been completed, and the fleet will now be divided into 4 fixed fleets, in which the Final series will be sailed. That it was the last qualifying races made some extra pressure for the Norwegian female team: "We had a little extra nerves today, but we tried not to think too much about it," said the Norwegian sailors, who sailed a 14th, 2nd, and 11th place. The girls had hoped for a place in the gold field, but instead they are currently first qualified in the silver field.
Female sailors, who do not give up!
The 29er class is successively seeing more and more female teams participating in regattas and championships, and it is worth noting that 56 out of 165 participating crews at this European Championship are pure female teams. In addition, there are also mixed teams, which adds another 10 female sailors to the total number of participants. Martina Lodos Falcón and Martina Díaz-Salguero from Spain, currently in 44th spot and therefore in silver-fleet: "We want to improve our result because we believe, we can do even better. Our teamwork is good, we have good communication and we do good together. Our strength is that we never give up, and we think that is very important," says the team.
Find more information, including full results, on the event website here.