Kieler Woche: Low pressure system Cathy causes late start record on midsummer night

The Olympic sailors experienced a new Kiel Week late start record on Thursday: on the longest day of the year, the Laser sailors in Strander Bucht were the last to start their fourth race at 8.47 pm. The evening race was well suited to the midsummer night and was due to low pressure system "Cathy", which caused a lot of disruption to the programme on the second day of the Olympic half of Kiel Week and made great demands on the organisers.

The active participants thanked them for their efforts. Philipp Buhl, who moved up to fifth place with 2nd and 4th place, said: "The Principal Race Officer and also our race officer deserve praise. It was a brave move to say at the end, 'Okay, the Laser class also needs two more races so that we can sail the gold and silver fleet tomorrow. Then we'll sail a little longer. It's light for a long time. I thought it was a good idea to just go through with it."

In addition to Buhl, it was above all the sailors of the German Sailing Team who advanced in their rankings on Thursday with outstanding results. In the women's 470, Frederike Loewe and Anna Markfort from Berlin took the lead ahead of their training partners Nadine Boehm and Ann-Christin Goliaß from Bavaria with another win on the day and a fourth place.

The guarantors of success in the 49erFX also performed confidently on this very demanding sailing day. The European champions Tina Lutz (Holzhausen) and Susann Beucke (Strande) sailed to second place on Thursday with a win on the day and an eighth place. Olympic ninth-placed Victoria Jurczok and Annika Lorenz from Berlin rehabilitated themselves after a botched start the day before with a race win and second place. As a result, the world number four team improved to seventh place.

The two German 49erFX women's crews form a leading international training community and want to secure the German national starting place for the Olympic Games at the World Championships for all Olympic sailing classes in Aarhus in August. "We should be able to do that," said Vicky Jurczok from the Seglerhaus am Wannsee club. Jurczok/Lorenz sailed to sixth place at the 2017 World Championships. "It will be tough, but we want to improve," announced the 28-year-old helmswoman.

Click here for the results.