2025 Open Finn European Championship at Circolo del Remo e della Vela Italia - Day 4
by Robert Deaves 11 Apr 22:15 BST
5-12 April 2025
For the fourth day in a row, Valerian Lebrun, from France, is the top of the leaderboard at the 2025 Open Finn Europeans in Naples. For the second day in a row, Italy's Federico Colaninno was dominant on the water, going one better than Thursday and winning both races. However, Lebrun now holds a 16 point lead from Colaninno, with Estonia's Deniss Karpak one point further back in third. Two races remain on Saturday.
The day again started with a postponement onshore waiting for the thermal breeze to build. While the competition was certainly getting hotter, the temperature was also finally increasing on shore. The fleet was released at 11.25 with the first race sailed in 7-10 knots and the second in 9-12 with free pumping on the final downwind leg.
In Race 7, Colaninno rounded with a good lead from Italy's Roberto Strapatti and Elemer Peter Haidekker, from Hungary. In the lightest winds of the week there were a lot of new faces near the front. Colaninno extended to win while Strapatti and Haidekker battled closely all the way with Haidekker taking second place by a few boat lengths. Many of the other favourites were deep. Lebrun recovered to 29th, just behind Italy's Arkadii Kistanov.
The breeze increased slightly for Race 8, and again Colaninno rounded first and extended, this time from Portugal's Filipe Silva and the defending champion, Alessando Marega, from Italy. Lebrun rounded about sixth and the chase was on. He was up to fourth by the second rounding but then Oscar was raised for free pumping, and he sailed through to second downwind and was catching Colaninno, but ran out of race course. Marega crossed third.
Haidekkeer said, "Today we had two races and the first one was very good for me because the conditions were very light around 6 to 10 knots and I had a very good start. I positioned myself in the middle. After that, I had a very good boat speed and at the first mark, I rounded in third and after that, I also had a very good boat speed downwind because I'm only 85 kg, so I felt very fast and on the second upwind mark I rounded in second place. The whole race was very good for me, and I hope my final result gets better. The forecast looks light for tomorrow and I hope we will have two good races."
Britain's Nick Craig has had an up and down week, but two solid races today puts him into the top 10.
"I'm really happy about today. I had a much better day. It was more my wind strength, so it was 8 to 10 knots when I'm either overpowered or fully powered, so I was just hanging on upwind and then going nicely downwind.
"This is a really nice championship with110 boats on the same starting line, which is fantastic. I love big fleet racing and big courses, you know most of the racing now has small courses so it's really nice to go back to long courses after a while. And the race management has been spot on. You really need a good race officer to get a fleet like this away, we've been getting a lot of general recalls, but we've been getting away in the end, so great work by Stuart on managing us."
On the fleet, "The class is in a fantastic place at the moment and nice to see so much strength, with ex-Olympians and young guys coming into the class as well, so it feels like it's in really good shape. It's hard, hard racing, but that's what we enjoy."
It's been an amazing week in Naples so far, with some great competition on the water with some great sailing in a variety of challenging conditions, but Saturday will be the last day, with two more races scheduled.
Most of the top sailors have a high score on the board, so it will be a nervous conclusion to what has been a great championship. Racing is scheduled to continue at 12.00.
Results after Day 4: (top ten, 8 races)
1 FRA 111 Valerian Lebrun 18pts
2 ITA 71 Federico Colaninno 34pts
3 EST 2 Deniss Karpak 35pts
4 ITA 51 Arkadii Kistanov 45pts
5 ITA 1103 Alessandro Marega 50pts
6 GBR 74 Lawrence Crispin 58pts
7 POR 21 Filipe Silva 60pts
8 SUI 7 Christoph Burger 81pts
9 FRA 75 Laurent Hay 82pts
10 GBR 790 Nick Craig 85pts
Full results available here.
Full gallery available here.