Kiel Week: "Kiel has earned its World Cup status"

The sails are already set: When the 122nd Kiel Week is opened on 18 June at 7.26 pm by Vice-Chancellor Siegmar Gabriel with the signal "Cast off", around 4000 sailors from 50 nations will set course for the world's largest sailing event on the Kiel Fjord. In pre-Olympic splendour, the national team is in action one last time before the hopefuls set sail for Rio de Janeiro. On the stage of the Audi Sailing Arena in the Kiel-Schilksee Olympic Centre, the athletes will officially say "goodbye" on Tuesday at 4 pm, before the majority of the Olympians head home to recharge their batteries and complete final equipment tests. The Olympic half of Kiel Week begins on 22 June and ends on the second Sunday of the nine-day regatta.

While the Kiel Week organisers are experiencing an upswing and increasing numbers of participants in many classes, they are still involuntarily having to live with low participation in the Olympic disciplines. The loss of World Cup status in 2013 means that many Olympic celebrities are sailing past Kiel. "It can't really be that Kiel doesn't have World Cup status. That would be essential," marvelled Laser vice world champion and active spokesperson Philipp Buhl. The 26-year-old from Sonthofen is one of the Olympic hopefuls in the Audi Sailing Team Germany and cannot understand why Kiel's fight to regain World Cup status has not yet been successful: "The sailing area in Kiel is just as world-class as the programme with partners like Audi, who offer the spectators on land a fantastic programme that cannot be found anywhere else."

With stars and the helmsman of the world association

Although top athletes such as the New Zealand 49er world champions and America's Cup stars Peter Burling and Blair Tuke and also 470 Olympic champion Mathew Belcher are competing this year, with a total of only around 350 Olympic boats in seven of the ten Olympic disciplines (the male and female surfers are missing due to lack of numbers, the men's and women's 470 fields have been merged for the same reason), Kiel is a long way short of the usual number of entries. The organisers are therefore not letting up in their dialogue with World Sailing, have just submitted a new short application and want to convince World Sailing's new CEO Andy Hunt during his visit to Kiel next week. "Kiel Week deserves its World Cup status," says regatta director Dirk Ramhorst, "and we want to show this to the new CEO Andy Hunt on site."

The fact that there are almost 100 entries for the J/70 European Championship should impress Hunt just as much as the newly arranged final "Super Sundy" and many other highlights as well as the fan programme on land. "We are offering a number of highlights this year, some of which have taken more than a year to prepare," explained Ramhorst. At a press conference in Kiel, the KiWo Head of Sport was also pleased about the tailwind for Kiel Week from the city and state: "The cooperation with the city of Kiel and the state of Schleswig-Holstein enables us to invest in the future of sailing in Kiel, for which we are very grateful." The German Sailing Association (DSV) inaugurated its new offices in Schilksee just in time for Kiel Week. This means that the Olympic training centre with boarding school, the national training centre and the DSV with a view to competitive sport are now operating from one location.

Boris Herrmann on foils in the Audi Speed Challenge

In addition to the J/70 European Championship integrated into Kieler Woche, the 470 Junior World Championship and the International German Sailing Championships in the single-handed keelboat 2.4mR, the Sonar and the new Olympic catamaran mixed discipline Nacra 17, the Audi Speed Challenge is also one of the highlights of this year's Keiler Woche. On Saturday, three foiling kites, a Nacra 17, a Nacra 20, three Flying Phantoms and an A-Cat, an 18-Footer and an iFly15 will compete against each other to see who is the fastest. World circumnavigator and record hunter Boris Herrmann, who has been an enthusiastic kite foiler for a year, will also be taking part. "I think that foiling kites are currently the fastest boats on the water, just behind the current America's Cup catamarans. Foiling kites have already reached 45 knots." Herrmann is looking forward to the challenge at Kieler Woche, saying: "I'm still at the beginning of the sport myself, and I get a bit wobbly legs at 25 knots. But I try to train every free day and who knows: maybe one day the discipline will even become an Olympic sport?"