The hopes for stronger wind were materialised on the fourth day of the Laser European Championship but the stability was lacking, which meant that the youth fleet only had one race to the disappointment of the youth competitors.

German Hannes Baumgarten was the winner of his group in the youth fleet. He felt that the shifty winds caused him difficulties catching the wind, but in spite of that he did not understand the decision of the cancellation.

“The wind was not good the first days of the Championship and now that we have good wind we should have more races,” he said.

Three races were originally planned and the seniors carried out all three races. And the fact that only one race was carried out for the junior fleet also disappointed the German Stefan Hoffmann.

“I needed more races to qualify for the gold fleet and the weather was my conditions and I think I had a fair chance of qualifying,” said the young German, who was 12th in his group.

Both the jury members and the Principle Race Officer of the regatta understand the disappointment of the youth fleet but they consider the decision of the cancellation as the most reasonable thing to do.

After the second start of the first senior group the wind was shifting to such an extent that the Principle Race Officer decided to abandon the race. And he found it was too confusing to change the course with four fleets at the course, which was the reason for sending the youth fleet in to harbour, he explained. The jury also argued that they wanted to carry out three races for the seniors because eight amongst the seniors had a black flag, which meant that they would not be able to participate in the sixth race, which would be the first race in the gold fleet in case Thursday’s races got cancelled. And none in the youth fleet had any black flags, which mean they all can participate in the final races.

The seniors were not too thrilled about having to carry out a third race though. They considered seven and a half hours at the see as quite tough according to the Portuguese Gustavo Lima and at the end of the day the wind more or less died to two meters per second.

Gustavo Lima was not complaining about the third race though since he came in first in his group. That result placed him as third in the ranking. The hardest competition of the day came from Swedish Fredrik Lassenius, Lima told. Lassenius is now in the top-spot after he came in as fourth, first and fourth in the three races of the day.

“I had a bad start but I sailed conservative which helped me,” the Swede explained.

The Swedes are dominating the top of the race the second best is Karl Suneson who is also from Sweden.

So far Polish Maciej Grabowski has held the top spot but in the first race of the day he came in 49th and was disqualified in the second race the third race went better with a result as number 2.

Results (after five races – senior)

1 SWE 167621 Fredrik Lassenius 20,0pts

2 SWE 175302 Karl Suneson 28,0 pts

3 POR 172330 Gustavo Lima 30,0pts

4 RSA 174838 Gareth Blanckenberg 32, 0pts

5 GBR 174121 Paul Goodison 37, 0pts

6 ITA 169102 Diego Negri 38, 0pts

7 SWE 173808 Daniel Birgmark 42, 0pts

8 GBR 171873 Edward Wright 53, 0pts

9 FIN 173470 Roope Suomalainen 60,0pts

10 GBR 175467 Dan Holman 60, 0pts

Results (youth)

1 FRA 171714 Thomas le Breton 12,0

2 GRE 173402 Andonis Manolakis 12,0

3 RUS 171935 Timofei Zbankov 15,0

4 GER 168014 Hannes Baumann 16,0pts

5 FRA 161321 Mathieu Murati 26, 0pts

6 GER 173543 Thomas Reger 32, 0pts

7 GRE 165261 Anthimos Nikolaidis 32, 0pts

8 GER 165782 Hans-Georg Teiser 33, 0pts

9 ITA 171288 Alessandro Rodiani 33, 0pts

10 GRE 171343 Andreas Rallatos 33, 0pts