Regatta news: Kieler Woche: Romy Kinzl and Heiko Kröger on course for success

Romy Kinzl continues to be in impressive form at Kiel Week. On the second day of racing in the Olympic boat classes, the Berlin native surfed to two victories on the day, surprisingly taking the lead in the overall RS:X standings.

Alexander Goltz/Mathias Grüning from Schwerin in the 470 and local hero Heiko Kröger in the Paralympics class 2.4mR also flew the German flag yesterday with their successes.

Alexander Hagen and Frithjof Kleen also put up a brave fight. The Hamburg "old star" and his club colleague from the Norddeutscher Regatta-Verein have crossed the finish line in third place four times so far and only have such prominent rivals as three-time Olympic participant Fredrik Lööf (Sweden/6.0) and Brazil's sailing superstar Robert Scheidt (8.0) ahead of them in the overall standings (12.0 points).

Tobias Schadewaldt was also "very pleased" with his 3rd, 6th, 10th and tenth place overall in the huge field of 155 Lasers. The Hamburg native sails around 210 days a year. His formula for success: "If you do something often, you are more likely to do it better at some point," says the Hamburg native, who was happy to have "survived the preliminary round without any strikes": "Now I have a very good starting position in the gold fleet." Although Schadewaldt has mainly trained in the 49er over the past three months, which he also wants to switch to in the long term, he switched to the Laser before Schilksee in order to "keep the tactical feeling" and gain competition hardness.

In the other classes, the crews of the German Sailing Association (DSV) mostly lagged behind the international competition. Like Petra Niemann, for example. The Berlin native, who is used to success, did not cope at all with the four to five force winds from westerly directions on two occasions and suddenly found herself only in 16th place overall (35.0) after the day's results of 20, 4 and 22, a long way behind the sovereign leader from China, Lijia Xu (5.0). The Peckolt brothers also had room for improvement. After two eighth places, Jan and Hannes "flew" with their double trapeze dinghy to third and fourth place in the afternoon and improved as the best DSV crew to twelfth place in the intermediate ranking (42.0). The Spanish Olympic champions from Athens 2004, Iker Martinez and Xabier Fernandez (17.0), remain in first place.

The German junior team Susann Beucke/Tina Lutz provided a ray of hope in the mediocre field of 470 women. The 17-year-olds continuously improved by two places in the three races of the day (8, 6, 4) and were rewarded with tenth place (52.0) in the overall standings. However, the DSV talents cannot yet hold a candle to the leaders Ai Kondo/Naoko Kamata from Japan (three victories, two second places).

X35EM: Fighting for every place
The X35 yachts completed four races yesterday at their European Championship and are therefore ahead of schedule. After a total of six races, Kilian Groth's Danish "Avt-People.com" is in the lead ahead of Achim Griese (Hamburg) at the helm of the "Celox". Strong winds of between four and five forces once again ensured exciting racing in the field of 16 boats. "In every race, we had at least five boats that crossed the finish line with a protest flag. The field is incredibly close, just like in a match race, there is a fight for every boat length from first to sixteenth place," said race director Eckart Reinke, who can now take the pace out of the European Championship schedule again. Only two races are planned for Friday and Saturday.

The German Open winner "Xen" from Flensburg is getting better and better. After difficulties at the start with ninth place, they even managed a 17th place. But with a second and a third place, Torsten Bastiansen's team has now moved up to fifth place in the overall standings. "That looks very good," said Sven Christensen, who, as always, cannot be on board for Kieler Woche with a bleeding heart. "It's going to be very exciting. There will be no cancelled results. Even in the last race, the classification can still get mixed up," said the head of the Kieler Woche management agency, Point of Sailing, who took two hours to follow the action on the racecourse.