On the second final day of the World Cup season opener off Miami, the German Sailing Team only had a chance of winning a medal in one discipline. However, the 470 sailors made the most of it in an impressive way: Berliners Frederike Loewe and Anna Markfort from the Seglerhaus am Wannsee (VSaW) club won gold, the first World Cup medal of their career. Fabienne Oster and Anastasiya Winkel from the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein celebrated World Cup silver. The double success was preceded by a thrilling race in which the positions and potential medal winners changed faster than the television viewers could watch.
The race had started anything but ideally for Loewe/Markfort, who had started the final as front runners. The duo had to roll up the field from behind after taking too many risks at the start boat, but were not deterred by this. Boat by boat, the VSaW ladies took back the lead with impressive positioning. They benefited from what Anna Markfort later said about her helmswoman: "Fredi had a great overview all week, especially on downwind courses, and also saw the pressure where others didn't." Shortly before the finish, Loewe/Markfort also outdid the Olympic champions Hannah Mills and Saskia McIntyre and overtook the experienced Brits. Fourth place at the finish of the medal race was enough to defend their top position. "This is a very good start to the season for us," said Frederike Loewe, "it shows that we worked very hard in the winter and have established ourselves among the world's best."
Fabienne Oster and Anastasiya Winkel also demonstrated their skills in the light wind poker of Miami. They got off to a better start and did not lose their composure during the medal race. Third place, ahead of Loewe and Markfort, allowed the young women, who had started the final race in third place, to move up to silver. The two German teams relegated the Brazilians Fernanda Oliveira and Ana Luiza Barbachan to third place in the final classification, while the Olympic champions Mills/McIntyre, who seemed to have gold firmly in their grasp several times during the race, were not satisfied with fourth place in the end.
The last four medal decisions following the "sailing battle" of the 470 women took place without any German participation. In the Laser, Norway's Hermann Tomasgaard dominated the Miami week with the best series across all ten disciplines and only half as many points as his closest rival Sam Meech from New Zealand. Top competitor Philipp Buhl, most recently third in the World Championships and second in the world rankings from Sonthofen, was briefly and fiercely upset about his "worst result in eight years", but already sounded eager to attack again when he spoke about the upcoming pre-Olympic season with many qualification races. The Kiel helmsman Max Kohlhoff had only just missed out on the medal race for the Finn sailors in eleventh place after a good series and a win on the day. The Swedish world champion Max Salminen, 2012 Olympic champion in the Star boat as Freddy Lööf's cox, and last year's Finn world champion, prevailed in the heavyweight class of the Olympic soloists. All other medallists, the final results and the placings of the German starters can be found here.
SECOND BEST NATION AT THE START OF THE SEASON
This World Cup regatta has not yet had an official national ranking. YACHT online has compiled its own statistics: The German Sailing Team was the second most successful of all 62 nations with two gold medals and one silver as well as a total of six top ten placings according to the classic calculation behind China with three gold medals and a total of seven top ten placings! That is a remarkable success. The German sailors in the 49er and 470 women's disciplines were almost single-handedly responsible for this at the season-opening summit with a strong field and only a few top international players missing. If the usual DSV top performers are included again for the upcoming competitions despite their "drop-outs", the national sailing team looks set for a promising pre-Olympic season, which will soon continue with the classic Trofeo Princesa Sofía off Palma de Mallorca in the first week of April. In the absence of their guarantor of victory and Finn helmsman Giles Scott, who is strengthening Sir Ben Ainslie's America's Cup campaign as a tactician, the usually strong British team had to be satisfied with one silver but still nine top ten finishes, while the sailing-loving French team had to settle for two bronze medals and seven top ten finishes. Australia consoled itself with gold in the Nacra 17 and bronze in the Laser with only three top ten finishes. The Dutch, who dominated the 2018 World Championships in Aarhus and whose surfing superstar Dorian van Rijsselberghe was not at the start in Florida and whose top athlete and Olympic champion Marit Bouwmeester, like Philipp Buhl in 25th place, was unable to cope with the dominantly light Miami conditions, did not finish in the top five.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
