French lead at 470 Europeans

Published on May 6th, 2021

Vilamoura, Portugal (May 6, 2021) – Day 5 of the 470 European Championship was dominated by the French teams in Women’s and Men’s fleets, with an excellent breeze of 10-12 knots all day. The French teams, Camille Lecointre and Aloise Retornaz in the women’s fleet and Kevin Peponnet and Jeremie Mion in the men’s, dominated the day and both teams are now the leaders in their fleets respectively and prime candidates for the European titles.

Among the top North American teams, Stu McNay/ Dave Hughes (USA) are 17th in Men’s, Nikole Barnes/ Lara Dallman-Weiss (USA) are 12th in Women’s, and Louisa Nordstrom/ Trevor Bornarth (USA) are 8th in Mixed.

The New Zealanders Paul Snow-Hansen kept their 2nd position and the Spanish crew Jordi Xammar and Nicolas Rodriguez climbed up to the 3rd position overall, 2nd in the Europeans, 15 points behind the French. Sweden’s Anton Dahlberg and Fredrik Bergstrom are on equal points to the Spanish, both teams having secured a medal at the European championship because of the irreversible points difference to the next team.

In the Women’s fleet, the World Champions Silvia Mas Depares and Patricia Cantero are in 2nd place, 10 points behind the leaders. The Swiss Linda Fahrni and Maja Siegenthaler are going into the Medal race in 3rd place, 1 point ahead of the 2019 world champions, British crew Hannah Mills and Eilidh Mcintyre, also securing these medals like in the men’s fleet.

The Israeli Mixed team of Nitai Hasson and Saar Tamir, leading the scoreboard since day 1, again today delivered great performance and are now keeping the competition again at a safe distance. Theres Dahnke and Matti Cipra from Germany scored a 4th and a 5th place and hold on to the 2nd position, securing at least the silver medal. Vita Heathcote and Ryan Orr from GBR had a difficult day scoring a 10th and a 4th, keeping their place in the top 3 ready to defend the bronze medal.

Fleet racing came today to its end in the 470 European Championship, with all 11 scheduled races sailed in 5 days, intense sailing from the elite of the 470 class sailors, delivering their best performance.

Tomorrow, the top 10 sailors of each fleet will sail the Medal Race. Points count double, and every decision must be taken wisely. Everything is still open in the 3 fleets with very few points separating the teams.

The plan is to have 11 races and a Medal Race on May 2-7.

Race details – Results – Facebook