Moana Delle herself is a little surprised that she can perform so well in the Olympic area off Weymouth. The Münster-born sailor from the Bayer Uerdingen sailing club is in third place after four races. But her good performance is not down to luck alone. The 23-year-old "sunshine" of the German Olympic sailors cites two reasons for his successful Olympic debut so far: "I have worked on my weakness in strong winds to the point of despair, and I simply enjoy starting the races here with the girls, racing and fighting."
However, she doesn't allow herself to look at the intermediate rankings for long. "The results don't matter for the next races. And today's races are already in the past. I take each new race on its own merits." That worked well at the start. And Olympic fans are already being reminded of Amelie Lux's Olympic summer fairytale, who twelve years ago did not lose gold in a duel with Italy's exceptional surfer Alessandra Sensini after a gripping duel, but won silver and thus enchanted the whole of Germany as the "surf flea". Can Moana Delle also write such a fairytale and win a medal? Her sheer enjoyment of the sport, her easy-going attitude and her passion speak in favour of it, along with her performance.
Similar to her team-mate Toni Wilhelm. The two surfers work in a team with coach Pierre Loquet and complement each other perfectly. The chemistry in this trio is just right. Wilhelm, who hails from the Black Forest, had set himself the goal of achieving two solid top ten results on his second day of the regatta, which he did with fourth and ninth place. In contrast to the previous day, however, the 29-year-old only managed one good start on Wednesday. He fluffed the second one and was only able to move up to ninth place as a result. "I'm still not going to bed tonight with a negative feeling," said Wilhelm, "some of the favourites have already caught a few big ones. My starting position is certainly the better one." According to Wilhelm, the starts are the key to success, especially in the shorter races like Wednesday, because there are hardly any more opportunities to make up lost ground at the start in the races lasting just under half an hour in view of the comparable speed potential at the top of the field. Leading the men's race is the "Flying Dutchman" Dorian van Rijsselberge, who has already achieved an impressive three race wins in four races.
Laser sailor Simon Grotelüschen from Lübeck Yacht Club made up one place today, moving up to seventh position in the intermediate classification after six of ten races up to the medal race of the best ten helmsmen and was not dissatisfied with his individual seventh and eighth places. He was more annoyed with his 19th place in the third race the day before. He had the opportunity to finish in the top five, but was penalised by the jury and capsized while curling. "The penalty already cost me five or six places, the capsize cost me at least as many," explained the 25-year-old, "that was extremely unnecessary and annoying. I left too much behind." Now the leading trio, surprisingly led by the Cypriot Pavlos Kontides ahead of top favourite Tom Slingsby and the Croatian Tonci Stipanovic, is already some way ahead of the rest of the field. There is a gap of 16 points between third and fourth place.
Laser Radial helmswoman Franziska Goltz from the Schwerin Sailing Club was penalised by the umpires on the water for the second time with a yellow flag for unauthorised pumping of the sail. For the sports student from Kiel, this meant disqualification from race six. As a result, the 27-year-old sports student Goltz dropped back to 26th place.
The Kiel 49er sailors Tobias Schadewaldt and Hannes Baumann finished 15th and ninth and moved up to 17th place in the overall classification after the botched race the day before. Tobias Schadewaldt, who has been suffering from a food allergy for days and therefore believes that he was "not quite awake and agile enough" on the previous day, said: "The field here is too strong and we are obviously too weak. We haven't yet been able to show what we're really capable of. But we fought our way back into the series today and want to attack again in the coming days. It wasn't an exhilarating result today, but it was a fresh start."
On Thursday, the Starboat and Finn sailors continue their races after the rest day. The sailing world is eagerly waiting to see whether England's sailing star Ben Ainslie has found an answer to the question of how he can stop the outstanding sailing of Denmark's Jonas Hogh-Christensen during the one-day competition break and perhaps lead his "Mission Gold" to success after all. While the Laser and Laser Radial are taking a break, the German 49er sailors and surfers are also back in action. The Munich 470 sailors Ferdinand Gerz and Patrick Follmann will be making their Olympic debut. The 470 sailors Kathrin Kadelbach and Friederike Belcher will start one day later. Helmswoman Kathrin Kadelbach celebrated her 29th birthday today in Weymouth with a training beat on the water and a measurement carried out without any complaints. The team management also gave her a chocolate cake for breakfast.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
