Olympic sailing: "I'll never forget this"

This is how a top athlete wants to start the Olympic season: With four wins on the day and a second and fourth place, Philipp Buhl has sailed himself into an impressive half-time lead at the Laser World Championship off Melbourne. The strong performance comes at an ideal time after a mixed 2019 season. "I'll never forget this again," said the 30-year-old from Sonthofen on Thursday. Series like his current one are very rare in the densely populated world elite of the Laser class, in which 130 boats from 44 nations compete for titles, medals and their Olympic qualification.

Buhl knows that the cards will be reshuffled with the start of the main round on Friday, but has been able to recharge his batteries over the past three days. The once again outstanding results on Thursday came in a strong qualifying group with World Champion Tom Burton, Vice World Champion Matt Wearn, Olympic Champion Robert Scheidt and his training partners Hermann Tomasgaard and Jesper Stalheim. But Buhl remains a realist and says: "In the gold fleet, 15th places can become valuable again from tomorrow." If all the top Laser sailors gather in the leading group of the main round, day wins will be harder to come by. Buhl is taking "a nice extra boost" from the successful preliminary round into this final phase of the world championships. "I make no secret of the fact that I'm happy today. It's nice to go into the main round with so few points in my account. But there's still a long way to go." The wind forecast for the fourth day of the Olympic single-handed dinghy sailing World Championships is shakier than on the previous days, before the pressure is expected to increase again towards the weekend. Behind Buhl, France's Jean-Baptiste Bernaz and Croatia's Tonci Stipanoviç are in second and third place.

On the other side of the Australian World Championship waters of Phillip Bay, Buhl's team-mates in the German Sailing Team are piling on the pressure at the World Championship for the three Olympic disciplines 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17. The Berlin 49er vice world champions Erik Heil and Thomas Plößel from the NRV are still within medal reach in fourth place after fluctuating results, but also another race win at the end of the day. Justus Schmidt and Max Boehme from the Kieler Yacht-Club were able to improve significantly. The North German duo moved up to seventh place on Thursday as the best top ten team of the day after a total of ten races. The Austrians Benjamin Bildstein and David Hussl took the lead in the 49er ahead of the defending champions Peter Burling and Blair Tuke from New Zealand.

What the official fourth day of the World Championship (but only the third day of racing) brought the teams...

In the 49erFX, Vicky Jurczok and Anika Lorenz defended their medal chances in fifth place overall after nine races. Team-mates and Olympic rivals Tina Lutz (Holzhausen) and substitute headsailor Lotta Wiemers (Kiel) slipped back to 14th place, but were able to end the third day of World Championship sailing on a positive note with a fourth place. The British Charlotte Dobson and Saskia Tidey took the lead in the 49erFX ahead of the Spaniards Támara Echegoyen and Paula Barceló. In the Nacra 17, Paul Kohlhoff and Alica Stuhlemmer from the Kieler Yacht-Club will be fighting for eleventh place on Friday to reach the medal final of the best ten mixed catamaran crews on foils. All three medal races for 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 are scheduled for Saturday, while the Laser sailors on the right side of Phillip Bay will finish their series without a medal race on Sunday.