Olympics: Tough day with "brutal holes" - Bergmann/Wille defend their medal chances
Tatjana Pokorny
· 30.07.2024
"I can't remember ever having sailed in such bad conditions in my career!" This clear statement came from 49er world champion Erwan Fischer on Tuesday evening. The helmsman knows the bay of Marseille better than most of the other Olympic sailors. The Frenchman has home advantage at the Olympic regatta on the Mediterranean, but that didn't really help on this challenging Tuesday. With his 49er cox Clement Pequin, Fischer is in eighth place in the 20-boat Olympic fleet of skiff sailors after nine of twelve races up to the medal final.
Spain's SailGP winners lead in the 49er
The newly crowned SailGP winners Diego Botin and Florian Trittel were among the few who had the confused wind conditions in the French Olympic sailing area under control that day. Just like their training partners Erik Heil and Thomas Plößel, who won two Olympic bronze medals in Rio and Enoshima, the Spaniards also like it "tricky". With 3rd, 2nd and 2nd place, they were the most successful team across all four disciplines on day three of the Olympic regatta and took the lead in the 49ers.
The German 49er sailors Jakob Meggendorfer and Andreas Spranger, on the other hand, suffered a few setbacks on Tuesday after two successful days of Olympic competition. They slipped back to eleventh place with 16th, 12th and 11th. This means that the Bavarians will have to fight for a place in the medal race of the top ten crews in the last three races on Wednesday.
Helmsman Jakob Meggendorfer reported after the races: "It was pretty mixed, didn't go as well as in the previous days. The conditions were very challenging. The last few days you could sail a bit nicer, act tactically and make nice starts. Some people managed it well today, we didn't manage it so well."
German skiff duo thwarted by "brutal holes"
Jakob Meggendorfer described the wind conditions two days before the medal races for the skiff disciplines on 1 August as difficult to interpret. The wind, which was as strong as 15 to 20 knots at times, did not always get into the bay properly due to the surrounding mountains. Because there were also "brutal holes", the lower limit of the wind force for this sailing day had to be set at five knots, according to Jakob Meggendorfer. For his crew, an ice bath and plenty of sleep were the only things left on the programme in the evening before the final spurt of the main round on Wednesday.
The 49er FX sailors Marla Bergmann and Hanna Wille, who continue to inspire, mastered the complex tests better. The women, who have been good friends since childhood, also finished their third regatta day as the best German team. Initially sixth after nine of twelve races, the young sailors moved up to fifth place in the evening following a disqualification of the Finnish crew. Although they had dropped back slightly from third place after two days with 11th, 8th and 8th place, they kept their surprising medal chances alive.
Just five points separated Marla Bergmann and Hanna Wille from third place with three races to go until the medal final. "If someone had told us before the Olympic Games that we would be in contention for the medals at this point, we wouldn't have believed it," said 23-year-old Hanna Wille. Together with her 22-year-old coxswain, she is the youngest team in the fleet of 20 international women's skiffs, which is peppered with Olympic and world champions.
Bergmann/Wille defend their medal chances
Marla Bergmann drew a correspondingly positive interim balance on Tuesday evening in the Olympic harbour: "The course so far has put us in the mood that we now know we could make it onto the podium. If you know it's possible, you'd obviously like to make it." Marla Bergmann also vividly described just how demanding and complex the sailing was that day in the Bay of Marseille with a picture: "We were partly in the boat and partly in the double harness outside. It changed dramatically in the ten metre range."
The windsurfers also suffered from the diva-like winds. Especially the German world champion from 2022 and runner-up from 2023: Sebastian Kördel was unable to find a recipe for dealing with the fickle pressure in the Bay of Marseille on this day. Despite intensive long-term preparation in the Olympic area and a developed "home feeling", he had never experienced a full training day like this Tuesday.
The south-easterly winds, which blew in and out of all directions, did not suit him very well. The 1.91 metre tall athlete from the NRV Olympic Team never got to grips with what many international sailors described as "stop-and-go" sailing on Tuesday. With 15th, 21st, 11th, 20th and 16th places, which were disastrous from his point of view, he dropped back to 19th place. The low points hit him hard, but he did not avoid commenting: "That was a pretty dark day. I had four bad starts. On the only good start, I was so far over the layline that it didn't make sense either."
Kördel takes low blows
The 33-year-old described his challenges honestly and unfiltered. Then, after six of a maximum of 20 races in the new Olympic iQFoil class, he looked ahead: "I knew that defeats could happen at the Olympics and that how you deal with them would be important. But I didn't expect the defeats to come so hard and so thick."
Ahead of the next five iQFoil races for men and women scheduled for Wednesday, Kördel said: "I'll see how I deal with it and what works tomorrow." The forecast for Wednesday promised little change, only slightly easier conditions. To make matters worse for Kördel, the maximum of 20 races he has set his sights on up to the final rounds will hardly be feasible after the total cancellation on day one. After six unsatisfactory races, he has at best ten more races left to turn the tide. After all, that would still leave more than 60 per cent of the races to go.
Sebastian Kördel's team and club mate Theresa Steinlein finished the Olympic endurance test on Tuesday on an upward trend. The iQFoil windsurfer from Wörthsee finished second in the last heat of the day after a gruelling three slaloms and two course races with a long wait for course alterations. Physically, it must have been one of the toughest days that the windsurfers had to master.
Steinlein remains in the top ten after a tough day
The iQFoil marathon demanded a lot from all Olympic athletes that day. "It was a long and tough day on the water," said the youngest athlete in the national sailing team at 22. After finishing 12th, 16th, 16th, 13th and 2nd, the windsurfer from the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein will start her third day at the Olympics in ninth place on Wednesday, after the opener was also cancelled for the female windsurfers.
