The regattas for the international boat classes finished on Tuesday. Now the races of the Olympic classes are coming up. So far, Claas Lehmann and Martin Schöle have won the 505, Jan von der Bank proved himself in the Contender, Dirk David and his crew won the Dragon, and Kai and Uwe Mares also took overall victory in the Bénéteau 25 as a father-son crew.
The Olympic class regattas remain for the rest of the week. These include the 49er, Tornado, Yngling and Laser Standard.
Wolfgang Hunger missed out on his 15th Kieler Woche victory overall and his seventh success in the 505 at the 123rd Kieler Woche. Claas Lehmann and Martin Schöler secured overall victory with a win in the fifth and final race. The Hamburg duo thus won the Kieler Woche for the second time after 2003.
Hunger and his co-skipper Holger Jeß only managed a third place in the final race, but even if they had won they would have had to hope that Lehmann/Schöler would have slipped up. "We're over the moon, especially when you've left someone like Hunger behind," said skipper Lehmann. "We always felt him breathing down our necks, but he never overtook us." Now the two Hamburg natives want to attack at the World Championship off Warnemünde. "Preferably on the podium," says Lehmann, Schöler wants "even higher" - and preferably before Hunger.
Hasso Plattner and Peter Alarie became faster and faster at the end of the series. The 61-year-old former SAP CEO does not appear to have any fitness problems. The duo finished in eleventh place, their best result.
In the year of the 50th World Championships, the entire world elite competed on the Charly track. Plattner finished in 23rd place out of 62 starters.
Having already had a fantastic day on the racecourse on Monday with a three-race winning streak, Jan no longer needed to pull the sheet tight from the bench. After a two-year break, he now achieved success for the third time. The man with the Contender expertise had already been successful once before in 1995. "Everything went like a dream: new boat, new mast, new sail. Perfect," beamed the man from Kiel. The World Championship off Warnemünde can come. The area suits him.
In the star-studded Dragon class, the Kieler Woche winner is Dirk David. With Stefan Abel and Jörg Strube, the Berliner defended his lead from the previous day with a seventh place. The crew led by Stephan Link from Munich came second. Sixth place was claimed by Michael Illbruck, who is addicted to kite sailing with Marc Pickel (Starboot) and Phillip Barth. "Marc is the boss and I steer the boat as fast as possible," says the Ocean Race winner from 2002. Illbruck, who is supporting Pickel and his currently injured co-skipper Ingo Borkowski (Biss vom Schäferhund) for an Olympic Starboat campaign for Beijing 2008, is very enthusiastic about the Dragon. "A challenging class that is great fun to sail in." New to the Dragon: Achim Griese, 1984 Olympic Starboat champion, finished 13th in Kiel.
"No coordination problems and no generational conflict" - Kai Mares and his father Uwe may have had to reduce the training intensity somewhat, but the crew's performance was enough to secure overall victory in the Bénéteau 25. A fourth place on the last day did nothing to dampen their spirits.
Benjamin Friedhoff and Johanna Munding achieved their first ever Kieler Woche victory. The two Duisburgers competed in the 29er junior class, which was held for the first time, and ultimately prevailed against strong foreign competition. No other class was as hard-working as the 29ers. In ten races, the 33 teams sped across the fjord very close to Schilksee. The duo from North Rhine-Westphalia won with 14 points ahead of the Brits David Hall and Jessica Smith (21).
The Europe class was firmly in Danish hands. The best Dane and Kiel Week winner by a wide margin was Jacob Ege Friis from Tranbjerg, twelve points ahead of Søren Johnsen. For the first time since losing their Olympic honours, men and women started together again. The best woman was a Swede, Rebecka Harding in twelfth place.
Bojsen-Möller - the name stands for the Danish interpretation of a Flying Dutchman. The brothers Jacob and Jorgen are a force in the Flying Dutchman. Three wins on the day and a second place as a stringer brought them their eighth Kiwo success since 1997 - unbelievable. Only in 2002 was the series interrupted by Genthe/Drengenberg from Hamburg.
The Dane Morten Nielsen overtook the Finn Bo Selko in the last race of the H-boats. Selko, who had been in the lead up to that point, finished the last race in 20th place. It was Nielsen's third overall victory after 1999 and 2000.
Pure excitement was also the order of the day on the Foxtrot track. Three J-24 teams were tied at the top before the final day. The crew led by Hauke Krüss from Berlin won with a fifth and a first place ahead of the team of Per Kock and Manfred
Other Kiel Week winners:
Laser Radial M: Steven le Fèvre; 420: Farolch Tarapore (India); Hobbie 16: Ingo Delius with crew Karin Wiese-Dohse; Ok dinghy: Nick Craig (GBR);
All results under www.kieler-woche.de.
Pascal Schürmann
Editor YACHT
