Sailing Grand Slam: Seven German boats in the final - one gold medal is certain

Simon Diesch and Anna Markfort did not have their best day shortly before the final of the Semaine Olympique Française in the Bay of Hyères. Finishing 25th and ninth respectively, the German 470 Mixed leaders paid tribute to the complicated wind conditions on Friday. However, this could no longer affect the commanding lead they had achieved up to that point.

Sailing Grand Slam: two 470 duos in the final

Because the 470 mixed duo with the sail number 11 performed so outstandingly this week and their closest pursuers from Spain hardly coped any better in the diva-like winds on Friday, the helmsman from the Württemberg Yacht Club and his foresailor from the Seglerhaus am Wannsee club have already secured their first Sailing Grand Slam gold.

Simon Diesch and Anna Markfort have won the second regatta of the Sailing Grand Slam so confidently that they are now uncatchable with just 31 points after ten races in the double medal race on Saturday. Spaniards Jordi Xammar and Marta Cardona have collected 52 points in ten races. With a 21-point deficit to Diesch/Markfort, they have no chance of overtaking the German pair on Saturday.

"Super solid series" from Diesch/Markfort

At the Sailing Grand Slam in the Bay of Hyères, the Spaniards are more likely to face danger from behind. Apart from Theresa Löffler/Christopher Hoerr (65 points), who finished fifth on the penultimate day of the series, four teams are fighting for silver and bronze. The 470 mixed medal race is scheduled for Saturday at 11am.

Simon Diesch and Anna Markfort are already looking forward to the final day of the Sailing Grand Slam. Anna Markfort said: "Mathematically we have won, but we are happy to accept congratulations tomorrow, because we get to sail again tomorrow. That's what we want, because that's what we're here for." Simon Diesch and Anna Markfort win the Semaine Olympique Française for the first time.

Anna Markfort rated the result as "very satisfactory". She said: "It is also what we had planned. So it's very nice that we've achieved that. The series was super solid. We had an eighth as a stringer. That meant we could allow ourselves a slightly bigger string today. Which of course we didn't really want to do, but the conditions in the first race were so tricky. It was so dicey that we were very happy that our series had been so solid up to that point."

Schultheis/Rieger back in the top three in the final

In addition to the two 470 mixed duos, five other boats from the German Sailing Team have qualified for the medal races of the French chapter of the Sailing Grand Slam in the disciplines Ilca 6 (from 11.00 am), 49erFX (from 11.45 am) and 49er (from 12.30 pm). Richard Schultheis/Fabian Rieger were able to make up valuable ground on the last day of the 49er main round.

With a race win in the 14th and last race before the final, the helmsman from the Norddeutscher Regatta Verein and his coxswain from the Seglerhaus am Wannsee club moved up to third place. Twelve points separate them in the medal race from the leaders Hernan Umpierre/Fernando Diz (Uruguay), nine points from the second-placed Americans Nevin Snow and Ian MacDiarmid.

Fabian Rieger's review of the races on Friday: "It was a difficult day with lighter winds over land. You had to sail your own race and avoid the traffic. Unfortunately, we dropped a few places here and there. The victory in the last race feels all the better when we got away well from the start, took the lead on the first downer and then extended it."

The potential is definitely there. And so is the speed." Andreas Spranger

Jakob Meggendorfer and Andreas Spranger, who finished eleventh at the Olympics, also made it into the 49er medal race. The crew from the Bayerischer Yacht-Club also felt the effects of the moody conditions on the day, as they also successfully fought for their place in the final in seventh place after the main round. Andreas Spranger said: "It was a wild mix today, not easy. You had to manage to get clearly on one side and escape the chaos. We managed that very well twice, unfortunately not so well twice." These and all other results can be viewed here.

In the 49erFX, two German crews, Katharina Schwachhofer/Elena Stoltze (Württembergischer Yacht-Club) and Marla Bergmann/Hanna Wille (Mühlenberger Segel-Club), also made it to the medal final in sixth and seventh place respectively. In the Ilca 6, VSaW helmswoman Julia Büsselberg catapulted herself into the medal race in ninth place with a race win at the end of the main round in her international comeback after her Olympic appearance last summer.

"I was a bit rusty here at the beginning, but then I got better and more active," she says in Hyères. And this too: "The result here is a positive surprise for me. I made the difference in winning the race today on the downwind. I want to enjoy tomorrow with the medal race and get my legs working again."

I was simply fast today. There's no other way to put it." Julia Büsselberg.

Julia Büsselberg has not sailed much since her Olympic appearance last summer, but is now making a strong comeback. She is currently training on her own with Austrian coach Andreas Geritzer and is embarking on a second Olympic campaign after her disappointing 25th place in Marseille. She says: "I didn't perform at the Olympics, didn't get my performance back and was a bit down afterwards. But the fire wasn't completely out."

On her renewed Olympic course, Julia Büsselberg wants to compete in the Ilca-6 World Championships in China in May and train intensively for the first time in the summer in the upcoming American Olympic venue of LA 2028, where she will then take part in the Long Beach Olympic Classes Regatta.