The weather was kind to the 130 competitors on day five of the Star Europeans yesterday, allowing the championship to get underway again.

The competitiveness of this two-man Olympic keelboat class is evident; out of four races there has been a different race winner ever time. Serge Kats/Jean Pierre Martens of the Netherlands took the race win from Hans Spitzauer/Andreas Hanakamp of Austria, to move themselves up to fourth place overall.

RYA team GBR sailors Iain Percy and Steve Mitchell, put in another good performance out on the water, scoring a fourth place to finish just behind Alexander Hagen/Olivier Vitzthum of Germany. This result sees them move up into 16th place overall, but unless they get enough races in on the final day, in order to allow a discard, the medals look out of reach for the current world champions.

Adding a sixth place to his impressive score-line, American sailor and triple Olympic medallist Mark Reynolds, sailing with Austin Sperry, have scored nothing worse than a ninth place throughout the championship and look set to take home a medal. Fredrik Loof/Andres Ekstrom of Sweden are just one point behind Reynolds and will be fighting hard on the remaining day to snatch the gold medal from Reynolds.

Results

1st Mark Reynolds/Austin Sperry, USA (9,2,4,6) 21 pts

2nd Fredrik Loof/Andres Ekstrom, SWE (1,3,13,5) 22 pts

3rd Niklas Holm/Martin Leifelt, DEN (2,12,8,11) 33 pts

RYA team GBR

16th Iain Percy/Steve Mitchell (DNF,10,2,4) 82 pts