The national team has started the 121st Kiel Week with its first successes. Three German teams have taken the lead in their disciplines after the first day of the Olympic part of Kiel Week. In the 49er, Justus Schmidt and Max Böhme from Kiel used their home advantage and took the lead in the well-staffed fleet of high-performance dinghies ahead of the Danish Olympic champion Jonas Warrer and Thomas Anders. The Berlin-based European champions Erik Heil and Thomas Plößel initially had to be satisfied with fourth place. For helmsman Heil, it was his first day on the water after four days of bed rest with suspected food poisoning.
Local heroes Paul Kohlhoff and Carolina Werner also scored with home advantage. The Nacra 17 crew sailed away from the field with three wins on the day. The Jersbek Paralympics winner Heiko Kröger took the top position in the classification of the small but demanding keelboats with equal aplomb. Newcomer Ulli Libor, who is taking part in Kiel Week for the first time in a 2.4mR, also had plenty to say about the challenge. The silver medallist at the 1968 Olympic Games and bronze medallist at the 1972 Olympic Games in the Flying Dutchman had been looking for a new challenge after selling his kite at the age of 75 and reported: "This boat is great fun, incredible sailing, a huge challenge. I now do on my own what ten men on a large yacht usually do together."
Less enjoyable than the fantastic weather at the start of the world's largest regatta on the Kiel Fjord are the numbers of participants in the Olympic events. Three years after the loss of World Cup status, a new low has been reached with only 269 boats taking part in eight Olympic disciplines (the surfers are not competing) and one Paralympic discipline. Due to many clashes of dates with continental and world title competitions, the stars are missing from the mammoth international regattas.
"We are working hard to regain the World Cup status by 2019 at the latest and are holding intensive talks with the class associations in order to equalise the density of dates around Kiel Week for the coming years," said the new Head of Organisation Dirk Ramhorst. There are already plans to swap the international and national parts of Kiel Week in 2016 in order to create more space between the preceding World Cup in the Olympic area off Weymouth and Kiel Week. The Olympic sailors will then no longer open Kiel Week, but will enter the action at the halfway point on Wednesday following the races of the international classes and set the exclamation mark at the end of the series with their medal races.
As the fastest boat in the opening regatta for around 90 large yachts, the trimaran "Musandam - Omansail" reached the finish line of the Welcome Race from Kiel to Eckernförde after one hour, 54 minutes and 18 seconds. However, the team led by skipper Sidney Gavignet with deep-sea professional Boris Herrmann and the Monegasque prince's son Pierre Casiraghi missed their own record from last year by just under seven minutes.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
