After three very different races, Finland’s Oskari Muhonen has taken the lead at the 2022 Finn Gold Cup on Lake Garda, Italy.
Muhonen (1 5 1) won two more races and now has 15 points and a three point lead from Pieter-Jan Postma (-8 2 3), of The Netherlands.
Austria’s Florian Raudaschl ( 4 1 8 ) won the second race and moves up to third overall, 10 points behind Postma.
There was a long wait for racing to begin on Thursday and in the end the first race was started in 6-7 knots, the second race in slightly more breeze, though it started to build significantly on the final downwind, setting up a great third race in 12-14 knots.
Otto Strandvig, from Denmark, led at the top in the first race – Race 4 – but the race was a fight between France’s Laurent Hay and Muhonen.
Hay led at the downwind and at the second top mark, but Muhonen got past in a last few hundred metres before the final gate to take the race win.
In Race 5 Muhonen led round the top, but Raudaschl had other ideas, finding more pressure on the right, and was in the lead at the gate and led round the remaining marks to take the race win from Postma and Miguel Fernandez Vasco, from Spain.
With the breeze up, there were some new faces at the front for race 6, but Muhonen used his downwind speed to take the lead by the gate and extend away to win from Domonkos Nemeth from Hungary, who has a clear lead in the Finn Silver Cup for the U23 World Championship, and Postma.
Three time Silver Cup winner Muhonen has now won three races this week in all conditions and looks comfortable.
Britain’s John Greenwood is in 33rd place on 168 points.
Four races remain. Racing continues until Saturday with two more races scheduled for Friday.
2022 Finn Gold Cup – Leaders after 6 races (110 entries)
1st FIN 8 Oskari MUHONEN SrM 4 1 -8 1 5 1 – – 12 pts
2nd NED 842 Pieter-Jan POSTMA MasterM 2 2 6 -8 2 3 – – 15 pts
3rd AUT 3 Raudaschl FLORIAN MasterM 8 -28 4 4 1 8 – – 25 pts
4th HUN 80 Domonkos NÉMETH u23M 9 3 -25 12 6 2 – – 32 pts
5th ITA 40 Marko KOLIC SrM 25 -38 1 5 4 5 – – 40 pts
6th ITA 1071 Matteo IOVENITTI SrM 3 15 10 -30 9 9 – – 46 pts
7th ESP 161 Miguel FERNANDEZ SrM 7 7 33 -66 3 4 – – 54 pts
8th ITA 115 Roberto STRAPPATI MasterM 6 -32 3 29 8 14 – – 60 pts
9th NED 148 Peter PEET G MasterM 5 17 -39 7 20 11 – – 60 pts
10th FRA 75 Hay LAURENT G MasterM 17 -41 21 2 7 15 – – 62 pts
11th POR 21 Filipe SILVA MasterM 10 -58 2 36 10 6 – – 64 pts
12th FRA 111 Valerian LEBRUN MasterM 13 10 31 -111 25 7 – – 86 pts
13th ITA 788 Roberto BENAMATI GG MasterM 18 -44 18 11 15 25 – – 87 pts
14th AUS 2 Rob MCMILLAN G MasterM 1 4 24 18 -50 44 – – 91 pts
15th ESP 7 David TEROL MasterM -111 43 5 6 14 30 – – 98 pts
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