Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen have won the 49er World Championship off Zadar in Croatia. New Zealand's Peter Burling and Blair Tuke were runners-up ahead of Denmark's Allan Norregaard and Peter Lang.
After an impressive start, the German Olympic candidates Tobias Schadewaldt and Hannes Baumann lost out in the final and will return home with a realisation that they want to work on intensively in the coming weeks. Helmsman Schadwaldt said: "We are simply not fast enough in duel situations. We are fast when we have enough space. But when it gets tight, we get into trouble. We will work intensively on this. That may have been neglected in our speed training in the winter."
The analysis corresponds to the results. The Kiel team got off to a flying start in the preliminary round of the World Championship series. With the ranks 2-3-5-1-3-8-7-1-3, the German duo was in second place in the field of 168 starters at times. The fall in the final (7-16-20-24-10-15-11-17) hurt accordingly. "That was a bitter pill to swallow," said Schadewaldt, "we missed out on the medal race on the same points as the ninth and tenth-placed teams. We need to significantly improve our one-on-one strength in small fields." This is especially true with a view to the Olympic regatta, where the field of 49ers will be somewhat smaller with only 20 participants than in a gold fleet with 25 starters.
Schadewaldt/Baumann could benefit from their younger sparring partners Erik Heil and Thomas Plößel. For the two Berliners, the World Championships went uphill: they were able to make significant gains in some of the final races and fought their way to an excellent seventh place. "We were very happy for Erik and Tommy," said Schadewaldt, "they are both very strong in duels."
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
