In their first phone call with YACHT online shortly after crossing the finish line, Victoria Jurczok and Anika Lorenz were not at all sure whether their fourth place in the final had actually been enough to win a medal. Really? Or not? Together with their coach Max Groy, they feverishly totalled the results of all the teams with the previous scores in the coach boat. And finally came up with the same result, which the official lists showed minutes later: with a one-point lead over Annemiek Bekkering and Annette Duetz from the Netherlands, the Berliners, who had started the medal final in fifth place, had catapulted themselves into bronze. While the Italian defending champions Giulia Conti and Francesca Clapcich got stuck in a wind hole in the final and the Brazilian former world champions Martine Grael and Kahena Kunze were also unable to finish higher than eighth, the fourth place in the medal race, which was achieved with good positioning in the doldrums over the last few hundred metres to the finish, was enough for the longed-for and well-deserved medal.
"It's amazing," said coach Max Groy a few minutes after the happy ending for his protégés, "we're all still speechless." Coxswain Victoria "Püppi" Jurcok had said before the regatta that she did not want to subject herself to the pressure of the national elimination for the Olympic ticket that was taking place at the World Championships. She simply wanted to sail the best possible regatta and enjoy it. During the World Championship series, this enjoyment of regatta sailing increased steadily. Even though two brilliant race wins for the lightest team in the top 20 were followed by a difficult day with moderate results in heavy swell, the crew from the Seglerhaus am Wannsee club never lost their enjoyment of sailing. "We were actually quite relaxed on the water," said Anika Lorenz. Jurczok then said to her coach before the final: "Now I want that medal too." After fifth place at the 2014 World Championships in Santander and reliably good placings at major events, she was due and confirmed what Jurczok herself always says: "One of our great strengths is that we are good when it counts. We have achieved everything we wanted here."
The two sports soldiers have extended their lead in the current Olympic qualifiers with World Championship bronze and the 25 points they earned for it. With a total of 39 points on their qualification account, they dominate the national competition. Their rivals Tina Lutz and Suann Beucke finished third in the medal final in ninth place at the World Championships, earning twelve points for their elimination account, but are already 20 points behind Jurczok/Lorenz with a total of 19 points ahead of the final elimination regatta at the Spanish classic Trofeo Princesa Sofía off Palma de Mallorca. Leonie Meyer and Elena Stoffers from the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein finished 21st at the World Championships, just as the Kiel twins Jule and Lotta Görge finished 30th at the World Championships.
The World Championship was not an elimination regatta for the 49er men. Erik Heil and Thomas Plößel from Berlin are still reliably among the top ten of the 49er elite in eighth place. The crew from the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein sailed to eighth place in the medal race. Their training partners and friends from Kiel, the reigning European champions Justus Schmidt and Max Boehme, did not lack lustre either, but lacked a little consistency. They had fluffed the preliminary round, achieved two brilliant daily victories in the intermediate sprint, twice beat Peter Burling and Blair Tuke and showed rousing performances, but narrowly missed out on a place in the medal final of the top ten teams at the end of the World Championship week.
New Zealand's high-flyers Peter Burling and Blair Tuke secured World Championship gold ahead of Austria's Nico Delle Karth and Nikolaus Resch and Great Britain's Dylan Fletcher-Scott and Alain Sign. Burling and Tuke had already secured their fourth World Championship gold with one race of the gold fleet and the medal race still to go, leaving the competition somewhat baffled. The Kiwis have been unbeaten for 23 major regattas in a row. Since winning silver at the 2012 Olympics, they have consistently finished first in the 49er. This makes the 2015 World Sailors of the Year the undisputed favourites for this year's Olympic Games. In the women's 49erFX, Spain's Tamara Echegoyen (match race Olympic champion in 2012) and Berta Betanzas won ahead of Denmark's Maiken Foght Schütt and Anne-Julie Schütt. In the Nacra 17, as in the 49er, the French top favourites and defending champions Billy Besson and Marie Riou came out on top ahead of Allan Norregaard and Anette Andreasen from Denmark and Vittorio Bissarro and Silvia Secouri from Italy. Austria's Thomas Zajak and Tanja Frank squandered their chances of World Championship bronze due to their own tactical errors in the medal race and finished fourth.
Tatjana Pokorny
Sports reporter
