Olympic sailing: World Championships with a flowery flavour

The participants in the 470 World Championship off San Isidro in Argentina had to struggle most with a flowery phenomenon: hyacinths floating in the water made life in the regatta difficult for the crews. The best crews came through with luck and new cleaning and rescue techniques. The German European champions Ferdinand Gerz and Oliver Szymanski also struggled with the pesky plants, but sailed to seventh place in the World Championships with a strong final spurt, once again underlining their medal ambitions for the Olympic regatta in Rio.

"It was a difficult World Championship with all the plants in the water," reported Ferdi Gerz about the unusual flowery phenomenon, "we normally have a device in the 470 that ensures that the rudder doesn't come up. Here at the World Championship, many have developed a kind of pull-up line to be able to pull the rudder up and free it from the plants again and again. Centreboard lips were constantly breaking. Sometimes the plants were hanging so low down that you couldn't reach them at all. Everyone had the same problem, but it did affect the results." The race took place around 22 kilometres from Buenos Aires in the river delta of the Rio de la Plata. The hyacinths had been washed into the sailing area by the upper reaches of the river and had spread through the water like a carpet of algae.

Ferdi Gerz and Oliver Szymanski had confidently qualified for the medal race in Argentina, once again confirming that they are among the favourites for the Olympic regatta in Rio de Janeiro in August. "There will be nine or ten teams that can sail for the medals with us. And I definitely count us among them," said the helmsman from Segler Verein Wörthsee, who is sailing towards Rio with his cox Szymanski from Joersfelder Segel-Club.

Australian Olympic champion, defending champion and 470 dominator Mathew Belcher proved vulnerable at the World Championships in South America, sailing past the medals in fourth place with William Ryan. The world champions were the Croatians Sime Fantela and Igor Marenic ahead of the New Zealanders Paul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox. Bronze went to the Frenchmen Sofian Bouvet and Jérémie Mion.

In the women's field, the Austrian defending champions Lara Vadlau and Jolanta Ogar secured their third World Championship medal in a row with bronze, but were beaten by the new French world champions Camille Lecointre and Helene Defrance and the New Zealand Olympic champions Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie. Lara Vadlau also reported on the arduous battle with the hyacinths floating in the water: "It was extreme in every respect. I constantly had to take the centreboard and rudder out because some green stuff got caught. In the second race, we had some kind of branch in the centreboard box that almost caused us to capsize. All in all, we got through the race relatively unscathed - without any damage." Annika Bochmann and Marlene Steinherr from the Seglerhaus am Wannsee club sailed to 16th place in the World Championship.