Youth America's Cup: "Promising!" - AC Team Germany gets off to a flying start in Barcelona
- How the Youth America's Cup works
- Finally in action on the AC40-Foiler
- Difficult crew decision for Youth America's Cup
- Paul Farien and Julian Hoffmann on a par
- Steep learning curve in the Youth America's Cup
- With talent and team spirit in the Youth America's Cup
- Lukas Hesse is Shore Manager in Barcelona
- Premiere in the Youth America's Cup eleven years ago
The America's Cup youngsters are on the move off Barcelona. For the third day in a row, crews of 18 to 25-year-old sailors are training in the Spanish waters for the 3rd Youth America's Cup since 2013. The six "invited" crews are currently active on the water every day, including the youth team from AC Team Germany. They are joined by the foiling talents from Spain (Sail BCN Team), the Netherlands (Jajo Team Dutchsail), Canada (Concord Pacific Racing) and Sweden (Swedish Challenge Team powered by Artemis Technologies).
How the Youth America's Cup works
These six teams will compete in the Youth America's Cup Pool B and compete in eight fleet races over two days. The top three teams will advance to the semi-finals. Opposite them are six junior teams with direct affiliation to the five challenger teams and the New Zealand America's Cup defenders. They form Pool A. Here, too, the top three will be determined over two days in eight races and will go through to the semi-finals.
Then, for the first time, the teams with mother teams in the America's Cup and the others will meet in a six-team semi-final fleet. At the end of four semi-final fleets, the two best teams advance to the final, which is tougher than the America's Cup final itself: Only one duel will decide the winner.
AC Team Germany is not one of the favourites in this competition. This is due to the fact that they are one of only two teams that had never sailed on one of the AC40 trailers on which the Youth America's Cup is held before the first training session this week. The budget of around 300,000 euros for the Youth and Women's America's Cup was not enough for this. However, hardly any other team has invested as much training time in the simulator that Marc Pickel brought to the new Foiling Academy in Kiel at the end of 2023 as AC Team Germany.
Finally in action on the AC40-Foiler
This week, the Youth America's Cup sailors were able to transfer what they had learnt and trained off Barcelona to the mini-cuppers for the first time. They have been allowed to sail their assigned Alinghi AC40 foiler for a handful of hours over two days so far. The dress rehearsal is already scheduled for 12 September: two starts and three races will be held for the B-Pool teams. Before that, however, AC Team Germany still had some tough crew decisions to make.
Like the women's crew of AC Team Germany, which will be challenged in the Puig Women's America's Cup from 5 to 13 October, the youth team has entered with six sailors. However, only four can start and will not rotate, as this would be counterproductive for the maximum speed and intensity of the experience gained in the qualifying round, which only lasts two days.
Paul Farien and Maru Scheel made the cut for the youth team as helmsmen. The Kiel native is the only helmswoman from the German women's team who is still young enough to do the double because the age limit in the Youth America's Cup is 25. She is joined by trimmers Tom Heinrich and Jesse Lindstedt, who narrowly prevailed in the internal competition for the positions. This was decided by the team on the evening of 11 September in Barcelona after consultation with the youth and women's crew coaches Max Böhme and Annie Lush.
Difficult crew decision for Youth America's Cup
In terms of performance - according to the assessment of the Alinghi coaches accompanying the training - the 21-year-old Ilca 7 starter Julian Hoffmann is on a par with the 25-year-old experienced foiler Paul Farien. Julian Hoffmann only missed out on a place in the four-man crew that has now been nominated due to the constellation of the races.
With equal performances, the initial motto was to use the women from the crew for the Women's America's Cup (5 to 13 October) so that they could gain as much experience as possible in the Youth America's Cup and take it with them to the Women's America's Cup. 49erFX helmswoman Maru Scheel made the leap into the youth team. "That's a strong performance from Maru, which we're also a little proud of. A win for us as a team," said Carolina Werner, team captain of the German women's team, which will be challenged in the first Puig Women's America's Cup from 5 to 13 October.
"They were very difficult decisions," said coach Max Böhme about the final crew selection process, "even in the simulator, everyone was very close together. We only had two days in Barcelona to make the final decision. All three helmsmen were the same. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. We had agreed from the start: In the event of a tie, we would like to nominate a woman and thus also increase the team's chances for the Women's America's Cup. We were able to make this decision easily."
Paul Farien and Julian Hoffmann on a par
Max Boehme explains the rest of the process: "Then we had to find the ideal partner for Maru. That was absolutely difficult between Paul and Julian. Even after the feedback from the Alinghi people here at training, it was very, very equal. Paul has now taken over the position and is therefore taking the lead role in comparison to Maru."
Campaign founder Paul Farien's decision took a few stones from his heart. The Kiel native said: "I had to focus a lot on getting my job done. It's tough because I've come to love Maru and Julian very much. Both are super strong in their areas, a bit more reserved and considered than me, good opposites to me."
Not being in the final line-up would have hit Paul Farien hard: "It would have been very hard for me - first founder, then manager in a dual role also on board, then focussed solely on the sport and suddenly on the brink - not to make it. I hardly did anything else for two years except breathe this air and work for this campaign."
Steep learning curve in the Youth America's Cup
Now the two helms of the AC40 sailed by the German Youth Team are multi-talented: the brisk Waszp Vice European Champion and Moth sailor Paul Farien in the dual role of skipper and helmsman on the right and the calm and prudent 49erFX helmswoman Maru Scheel on the left, even under high pressure. Ten buttons plus a protest button make up their demanding range of action. Behind them in the boat are the trimmers. Together they bend their learning curve in Barcelona as steeply upwards as possible.
The more than one thousand hours that some team members have spent in the simulator since the end of 2023, which the two-time Kiel Olympian, star boat developer and coach Marc Pickel brought to Kiel in a dedicated private initiative at the end of 2023, have helped. "We felt like we were sleeping and camping there," recalls Maru Scheel of intensive simulator sessions lasting up to twelve hours.
The first training sessions before Barcelona have now shown that Team Germany is well on the way to putting theory into practice. Coach Max Boehme says: "On the first day, we were the only team to get ourselves onto the foils in some very light winds. What we saw overall was very promising." This is good news, as some of the German team's upcoming opponents have a huge head start and were able to gain AC40 experience before the start of training in Barcelona. The Swedes even have their own AC40-Foiler.
With talent and team spirit in the Youth America's Cup
"It has been shown here that we are a really great team," says Paul Farien. And he continues: "What I said to the team in a little speech is important to me: "I was still a very young 29er sailor in 2013 when the first Youth America's Cup took place. I was very, very impressed by the German team in San Francisco back then. That had a lasting effect on me."
Paul Farien would like to pass on this kind of inspiration: "I would be delighted if we could now also succeed in passing on courage, ambition and willpower. Julian would still be young enough next time. It would be a great wish to be able to pass on the sceptre and also build a strong foundation and centre of excellence with the Foiling Academy in Kiel, where future Cup activities can grow and new talent can be trained."
Maru Scheel shares this view: "We hope that we can lay the foundations for further AC projects in Germany. For Women's and Youth AC or the big AC. We want to inspire young sailors with the Foiling Academy so that we can realise this major goal. We want to learn from this project and use it for the future."
Lukas Hesse is Shore Manager in Barcelona
The youth and women's teams are currently stationed together in Barcelona, where they have set up their base camp in the old Olympic harbour with sponsors Oliver Schwall, Ole Satori and their team. Lukas Hesse played a big part in this as shore manager. "He's doing a fantastic job," says Paul Farien and others. Coach Max Boehme is also impressed: "Lukas Hesse does a fantastic job from performance analysis to logistics management."
"It's a mega feeling to be here, to be able to sail the boat. We are in a great boat park, with a cool team of our own, who get to sail such a spectacular boat," reports Maru Scheel in Barcelona. After the first sessions on the AC40, the members of AC Team Germany got a good impression of sailing the AC40s, even though the wind did not co-operate well on one of the two days, it was difficult for all teams to make their own take-offs and the training windows are only small.
The limited and rare training hours on the AC40s on just three days and at fixed times are a challenge. "If I compare it to the 2013 Youth America's Cup, we had a 10-day training camp on the Cup boats and almost two weeks at the event. And the boats were a world apart back then," recalls Max Boehme.
Premiere in the Youth America's Cup eleven years ago
The coach himself was part of the first German crew at the premiere of the Youth America's Cup in 2013. Team All in Racing also included future Laser World Champion Philipp Buhl as skipper, two-time Olympic bronze medallist and current SailGP helmsman Erik Heil, Max Boehme's 49er helmsman Justus Schmidt, Max Kohlhoff, Michael Seifarth and David Heitzig, who went on to continue their careers.
