First day of racing at the Finn Open and U23 European Championship 2021 in Vilamoura, Portugal.
After two races in a light breeze, defending champion Zsombor Berecz (4,5) of Hungary tops the leaderboard with a two point advantage.
In second place is Thomas Ramshaw (9,2) of Canada and third is Britain’s Henry Wetherell (1,16).
Reigning Olympic champion, Giles Scott, finished fifth behind Berecz in the first race, but a 37th place in race 2 put him in 18th place overall.
Team-mate Ben Cornish suffered in the light conditions, a 23 and 41 placing him 35th overall.
The first race went to Britain’s Henry Wetherell, with second Australia’s Jake Lilley and third Deniss Karpax of Estonia.
The second race was a win for Nicholas Heiner of Holland, with second Thomas Ramshaw of Canada and third Alican Kayner of Turkey.
The difficult conditions caused some major upsets. Apart from Scott’s 37th in the second race, Lilley had a 32nd and Karpax a 24th, while Heiner bounced back from a 35th in the first race to win the second.
Wetherell said, “The day started off light with a building breeze which made the racing tricky. I managed to get to the fresh breeze on the right in the first race, which was the major change and made some gains through the race to take the win.”
“The second race was different with a long left shift and pressure, which I had to bail out to the right to cut my losses. It was a tough day out there and very tricky to put a finger on what was the next big change would be.”
With his main training partner in Auckland for the America’s Cup he said it was good to get the group back together. “Preparations have been short with Giles [Scott] and Ben [Cornish] returning from the Cup but we have had some quality training. It’s a great group to hang out with and also train hard.”
Finn Open and U23 Europeans – Leaders after 2 races (49 entries)
1st HUN 40 Zsombor BERECZ – – 4 5 – – 9 pts
2nd CAN 18 Thomas RAMSHAW – – 9 2 – – 11 pts
3rd GBR 71 Henry WETHERELL – – 1 16 – – 17 pts
4th ESP 26 Joan CARDONA – – 15 4 – – 19 pts
5th TUR 21 Alican KAYNAR – – 17 3 – – 20 pts
6th CRO 369 Milan VUJASINOVIC – – 14 6 – – 20 pts
7th CZE 5 Ondrej TEPLY – – 6 15 – – 21 pts
8th SWE 33 Max SALMINEN – – 12 12 – – 24 pts
9th EST 2 Deniss KARPAK – – 3 24 – – 27 pts
10th RUS 4 Egor TERPIGOREV – – 8 19 – – 27 pts
11th ARG 48 Facundo OLEZZA BAZAN – – 18 9 – – 27 pts
12th FRA 93 Antoine DEVINEAU – – 11 18 – – 29 pts
13th AUS 1 Jake LILLEY – – 2 32 – – 34 pts
14th NED 89 Nicholas HEINER – – 35 1 – – 36 pts
15th POL 17 Piotr KULA – – 19 17 – – 36 pts
16th CRO 10 Nenad BUGARIN – – 10 27 – – 37 pts
17th CRO 1 Josip OLUJIC – – 25 13 – – 38 pts
18th GBR 41 Giles SCOTT – – 5 37 – – 42 pts
19th USA 91 Luke MULLER – – 13 29 – – 42 pts
20th EST 1 Taavi Valter TAVETER – – 33 10 – – 43 pts