Olympic sailing: The defending champions are back

The defending champions from the Seglerhaus am Wannsee club picked up where they left off last year at the start of the first World Cup regatta of the season off Miami: Victoria Jurczok and Anika Lorenz demonstrated with third place in their only 49erFX race of the day that they are once again a force to be reckoned with after a few setbacks last year. Fabienne Oster and Anastasiya Winkel from the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein, who will start the other qualifying races on Wednesday in a strong second place overall, even managed to move up one place after two races in the women's 470 fleet. Frederike Loewe and Anna Markfort completed the remarkable overall result of the German 470 sailors on Tuesday with their fourth place in the intermediate classification.

With Finn helmsman Phillip Kasüske from Berlin and the 49er World Championship bronze medallists Tim Fischer and Fabian Graf, two other German boats were able to achieve fourth places, putting them in a good starting position for the coming days. Kasüske also left world champion Max Salminen from Sweden behind him, while Fischer/Graf were the best German 49er team on this day with its light and shifty winds in Biscayne Bay, finishing 4th, 7th and 17th individually. In total, the members of the German national sailing team achieved nine top ten finishes at the start and thus promising positions for the week-long regatta, which ends with the medal races next Saturday and Sunday.

The American regatta of the 2019 Hempel World Cup series got off to an unfortunate start for two prominent top performers: helmsman Philipp Buhl had opened the annual overture on Tuesday with a reliable sixth place in the largest fleet of 101 Laser dinghies, but fell back to 52nd place due to his subsequent early start before the first stroke was reached. "That was a close early start downwind," reported the 29-year-old, "stupid, but it happened. But I'm very happy for Nik." Younger team-mate Nik Aaron Willim is in 21st place after two races with two eleventh places. Rio bronze medallists Erik Heil and Thomas Plößel were "dismantled" by a Canadian boat at the penultimate buoy in the first race. The compensation awarded to them in the protest hearing in the evening is supposed to correspond to the average value of the results achieved in races two to nine, so will only really take effect after the 49er qualification has been completed.

Here for the current intermediate results of the World Cup regatta off Miami.

Addendum, 30 January, 11.11 am: Late on Wednesday night, the organisers added the 470 women's results and incorporated the results of jury decisions into the interim results. Vicky Jurczok and Anika Lorenz in the 49erFX then slipped back one place to fourth with a penalty.