Bundesliga: A nail-biting finish to the masterpiece - MSC success in Bavaria
Tatjana Pokorny
· 20.10.2024
It's hard to imagine how this final of the twelfth Bundesliga season played out on and around Lake Starnberg. The championship trophy was only decided in the final minutes. To really understand the nail-biting match that preceded the redemptive jubilation of the new German club champions, we first need to look back.
First a "lift team", now champions
The Mühlenberger Segel-Club (MSC) - once a modest entry into the Bundesliga, then twice relegated and promoted from the 1st Bundesliga as a "lift team" - finally seemed to have all the ingredients it needed to seriously fight for the championship trophy this season after finishing third last year. After four of six league regattas, the MSC team was enthroned at the top of the table.
At the fifth regatta, however, the seven-time record winners from the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein overtook the MSC shortly before the final of the twelfth season. The two Hamburg clubs set course for the showdown on Lake Starnberg in this order. Only three points separated the league leaders from NRV and their hunters from MSC, who had already announced a focussed and direct duel with their Hamburg Alster rivals before the final.
The problem: The final hosts from the Bavarian Yacht Club had everything to offer, from warm hospitality and their beautiful club grounds to a picture-book course and a highly committed race committee. Except no wind. Well, almost no wind. As this was to be feared even before the first starting shot was fired in view of the extremely poor forecasts, the Bavarians got going straight away with the first starting shot on Thursday, but didn't manage more than a few handfuls of races.
Bundesliga final: When the clock is ticking loudly
The determined MSC sailors made the most of their small initial opportunity. Magnus Simon, Lynn Hafemann, Finn Olsen and Matteo Wolgast catapulted themselves into first place straight away with 3rd, 1st, 1st and 3rd place respectively. At the same time, NRV sailors Luise Wanser, Juliane Adelssen, Tom Heinrich and Henrik Peters struggled with the conditions and had to sort themselves into the lower places. So far, so good - from the MSC crew's point of view.
If only there hadn't been the problems with the time limit (3.30 pm), the lack of wind and the fact that at least six of the planned 16 races were required for the regatta to be valid. Even after two days, only three, sometimes four of these had been completed. Under these circumstances - without further races and without the final league regatta being valid - the championship trophy would have gone to the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein for the eighth time after 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023.
Under these conditions, the clock began to tick relentlessly on Saturday morning in thick fog on Lake Starnberg. Tick. Tick. Tick. The clock was ticking in favour of the NRV team and against the MSC team. All the league sailors were feverish, knew the situation and the last possible start time, which would be reached at 3.30 pm. In addition to Albert Gerstmaier from Konstanzer Yacht-Club, MSC helmsman Till Krüger, who was taking a break as an active sailor in his rotating team, was also on duty as co-commentator for this league final.
The title dreams were almost over
"In the end, it was a matter of minutes. During the commentary, we said: It has to start at 2 p.m., otherwise it won't work," Till Krüger reported on the nail-biting race. At 2.10 pm, there was still no wind in sight. "That's when we said it was probably not going to happen," said Krüger. But then breezes began to appear on Lake Starnberg. The race organisers reacted immediately. "In the end, there was even one more race than necessary, but the wind shouldn't have come ten minutes later," recalls Till Krüger of the nerve-wracking minutes.
If two out of three races were completed in the sixth flight, the boats in the third, no longer held race received the average number of points for the races they had completed up to that point. This is what the regulations stipulate. This meant that the last league regatta could be scored and the Starnberg victory of the Elbsegler from Mühlenberger Segel-Club was the deciding factor in the battle for the championship. With 3rd, 1st, 1st, 3rd, 2nd, 2nd place in the most difficult light wind conditions, Magnus Simon and his crew had earned the regatta victory and also the first championship title in the MSC club's history.
The most important thing for us was to keep the NRV under control." Magnus Simon
"After winning the first two flights against the competition from the Alster and finishing the first day with scores of 3.1 and 1, we focussed more on ourselves. Our biggest opponent in the battle for the championship title today was the wind. After two cancelled flights due to a calm and the lurking danger that this day might not be included in the ranking, we were quite nervous." That quickly subsided with the happy ending.
Hamburg's league strength
In contrast, the record champions from NRV were dealt a bitter blow, finishing eighteenth in the final showdown of the season after poor results in light wind races and an early start. Neither the crew around 470 World Champion and Olympic sixth-placed Luise Wanser nor her club had expected this in view of the sailing quality and experience of the team. "We are proud of our team, who did such a good job in the lead-up to the race. It was very frustrating for us, just to cry. And we only sailed for 50 minutes over three days...", said Luise Wanser.
NRV Club Manager Klaus Lahme said: "We are surprised and disappointed by the poor result in Starnberg. But with the MSC, a very strong team won, and we congratulated them. On a positive note, Hamburg finished the league season in first and second place. This is certainly also thanks to the good youth training that has been intensively pursued in Hamburg for many years. We have also been rotating our NRV league squad for twelve years." The generational change in the NRV after the "Schadewaldt era", which is currently in full swing, was rewarded with the runner-up position.
The conditions were very difficult." Anke Nowak
There was jubilation at the MSC an der Elbe. "We received so many congratulations from the club," said Till Krüger. Magnus Simon explained the background to the success: "The MSC has always had changing helmsmen in previous years and was able to benefit from the vast experience of the entire squad this season."
The Münchner Yacht-Club (MYC) secured its third first division podium finish of the season on Lake Starnberg with good knowledge of the area and sixth place on its home turf. The Bavarians pushed Berliner SV 03, who had even travelled here with a slight chance of winning the title, into fourth place in the final table, closely followed by the host Bavarian Yacht Club (BYC), which also shone in sporting terms at the weekend with third place ahead of Starnberg behind the Academic Sailing Club Warnemünde.
"Both NRV and SV03 had problems this match day," says Anke Nowak, Managing Director of the German Sailing League. We had very little wind and one day of rain. It was only the thermals today that enabled us to start as many races as necessary so that the match day could be included in the classification."
Relegated and promoted teams in the Bundesliga
The Konstanzer Yacht-Club (KYC), Regatta Segler Neuruppin (RSN), Württembergischer Yacht-Club (WYC) and Flensburger Segel-Club (FSC) have been relegated from the upper house of the German Sailing League. In contrast to the first division teams, the second division teams did not achieve the required number of races in their fifth and sixth events of the season. The team from Westfälischer Yacht-Club Delecke (WYD) won the season ahead of Blankeneser Segel-Club (BSC), Potsdamer Yacht-Club (PYC) and Klub am Rupenhorn (KAR). All four teams will therefore be first class in 2025.
"The Sailing Bundesliga has once again shown how much excitement there is in this format and how crucial it is for success to deliver a consistent performance over the entire season," says Sailing Bundesliga initiator Oliver Schwall ahead of the DSL Cup, which will be held on the Möhnesee on 26 and 27 October.
