Dutch Water Week off Almere is part of the Sailing Grand Slam (SGS) series testing a new compact format designed to be fast, fair, and easy to follow.
Now in Olympic class sailing this is a concept often aspired to but rarely achieved . . . at least for the non-sailing media who like things kept simple, and as we have seen in some of the latest Olympic sports variants, very simple.
The Dutch are testing a new compact format in which the top five athletes per class from the SGS ranking were invited. In addition, each international class association nominated three sailors, while the Dutch organisers held two wildcards per discipline.
The result: small but very strong fleets, with local favourites competing alongside global champions.
The event opened Wednesday with three of the four invited Olympic disciplines racing: ILCA 6 (women’s dinghy), ILCA 7 (men’s dinghy), QFOiL men (windsurfing). The 49er (skiff) of ten Dutch top teams will join at the weekend.
To add to the general confusion a new scoring system is also being tested.
This rewards only high points to the first three finishers, with no difference between finishing fourth or tenth.
Thus in the ILCA7 men, Michael BECKETT won the first two races (3pts each) and was outside the first three in the third race (0 pts), which gives a first day ILCA7 result of:
1st – Michael BECKETT leads with 6pts.
2nd – Nicholas HALLIDAY with 5pts, from two 3rd places (1pt each) and a race win (3pts)
3rd – Duko BOS with 3pts, from a 2nd (2pts) and a 3rd place (1pt).
4th – Finn LYNCH with 2pts, from a 2nd place.
5th – Willem WIERSEMA with 2pts, from a 2nd place.
All other finishing position scores are ‘0’.
Competitors 6 to 10 are placed 6th with zero points.
ILCA6 women are using a low-points format:
ILCA6 Top 3 after 3 races (10 entries)
1st POL Agata BARWINSKA 5 1 1 – – 7 pts
2nd IRL Eve MCMAHON 1 5 2 – – 8 pts
3rd AUS Zoe THOMSON 4 6 4 – – 14 pts
iQFoil men are using a high-points format, first three finishers scoring only
iQFoil Top 3 after 5 races (10 entries)
1st ESP Nacho BALTASAR SUMMERS 3 3 0 2 3 – – 11 pts
2nd DEN Johan SØE 2 1 3 3 2 – – 11 pts
3rd NED Joost VINK 0 2 0 1 0 – – 3 pts
