World Championship 49er, 49erFX, Nacra 17: "What happened to the Germans?"

Jakob Meggendorfer and Andreas Spranger have many good reasons to be proud of their performance at the skiff sailing world championships The fourth place is the best World Championship result for the crew from the Bavarian Yacht Club. The 49er Olympic silver medallists from Marseille showed in the French bay of Quiberon with two race wins and a strong series that they are fully back after a long period of injury. By the second of the two final races on Sunday, they had even from third place after the main round worked his way up to silver. The medal was within reach.

"The Germans disappeared from the map"

Anyone who watched the World Championship final on the 49er class live stream was there when Meggendorfer/Sprange got off to another good start in the second medal race and made a promising move into the top five. That looked confident and promising. Until they suddenly "disappeared" on the last downwind. Even the commentators Andy Rice and the Swedish FX World Champion and Olympic silver medallist Rebecca Netzler couldn't explain it. "The Germans disappeared from the map. What happened to the Germans?", Andy Rice asked himself and everyone else more than once.

The question could not be resolved from the outside until well after the end of the race. It was only later that Jakob Meggendorfer and Andreas Spranger were able to explain their "disappearance" even to those who were not on the course. Their unfortunate positioning on one side of the course had triggered the chain reaction with enormous losses. The last downwind proved to be their undoing in the battle for the medals when they failed to return to the centre of the course, where, in contrast to the previous day, the pressure had long since improved.

Blocked by the Australian team of Harry Price and Max Paul downwind, Meggendorfer/Spranger were not able to hold back to the centre for long enough. "The Australians slipped in downwind and we just couldn't get back out of our corner. When we were able to jibe, they were able to jibe on top of us. And when the others have three knots more wind, they just sail away with six knots more speed," said Andreas Spranger, explaining the unfortunate low blow at the end of a week that had been so successful up to that point.

49er World Championship final: an unfortunate scene cost the medal

The resulting tenth and final place in the last medal race cost the Bavarians a place on the World Championship podium. Andi Spranger said afterwards: "Today we are sad and disappointed that we couldn't win the medal. In a few days' time, we can certainly be proud of our performance." The world champions were New Zealanders Seb Menzies and George Lee Rush (31 points). Silver went to Austria's Keanu Prettner/Jakob Flachberger (37 points) ahead of the Dutch duo Bart Lambriex van Aanholt/Floris van de Werken, who tied on points.

Jakob Meggendorfer and Andreas Spranger (41 points) were four points short of a medal in the final World Championship standings. The German 49erFX women had even entered their two finals with two crews. Due to the point compression in the new final format of the skiff sailors, both the Olympic sixth-placed Marla Bergmann and Hanna Wille (Mühlenberger Segel-Club) and Maru Scheel/Freya Feilcke (Kieler Yacht-Club) in fourth and sixth place, respectively, did not have a chance of winning a medal. Realistic medal chances before the final. In the extremely turbulent FX finals, the tension was high. And there were some big surprises.

The first to suffer were the Spanish defending champions Paula Barceló and Maria Cantero, who had been outstanding for a week. Their dominance was first curtailed by the new point compression for the final, before they themselves lost the gold they had almost been certain of with two tenth and last places in the two finals and had to be satisfied with silver. Pia Dahl Andersen and Nora Edland waited a long time on the water after the final until the race committee's decision crowned them the new champions.

Scheel/Feilcke were one point short of World Championship bronze

Maru Scheel and Freya Feilcke from Kiel (52 points) finished fifth in the final World Championship rankings, just one point short of World Championship bronze. The medal went to Poland's Aleksandra Melzacka and Sandra Jankowiak. Marla Bergmann and Hanna Wille came seventh with 53 points after the hotly contested women's final. They were just two points short of world championship bronze. The 49erFX sailors were just as close.

Coxswain Maru Scheel said after the finals: "We only found out on land which place it was. Before the World Championships, we would have taken it straight away. But there was also a bit of pain today. But mostly there is pride and joy." Maru Scheel noticed "extremely many manoeuvres" in the medal races. That speaks against what you normally do. And for difficult conditions."

Maru Scheel said the best quality of her crew was "the good boat feeling we had all week". It helps a lot when you don't have to fight with the boat, but can "look out of the boat" in order to plan strategically. The new final format, with its strong compression of points before each of the two medal races, has indeed given the races almost unpredictable results and the hoped-for extra excitement. "It's also safe to say that this means there are no match races because everyone is so close together and you can't sail towards a particular team," explained Maru Scheel.

Homework for Olympic sailing

Less helpful were the difficulties experienced by the organisers in dealing with the results, which often took a very long time to arrive. It is of little help to create more excitement for Olympic sailing with new formats if sailors, coaches, commentators and reporters lack results and the associated categorisation options at the same time. Results are the basis for everything. You had to feel sorry for the live commentators, who too often had to rely on guesswork or their own calculations.

The Olympic sailing sport and its classes must urgently and quickly resolve this open flank, because no final, however cleverly trimmed for suspense, is really exciting if the intermediate results cannot be categorised in the overall picture. And at the end you don't know who has won and how all the participants have done. In a 100-metre race, nobody wants to wait a quarter of an hour for the winner to be determined. Determining the results for finals with only ten boats is not rocket science.

Head coach Dom Tidey took stock for the German Sailing Team after the World Championship final for 49er and 49er FX - there was no GER team at the start in the Nacra 17, the Italians Gianluigi Ugolini/Maria Giubilei won ahead of Tim Mourniac/Aloise Retournaz (France) and John Gimson/Anna Burnet (Great Britain) - with one crying and one laughing eye.

It's a bittersweet result." Dom Tidey

The Head Coach of the German Sailing Team said in Quiberon: "On the one hand, it's always tough when you miss out on the medals by such a narrow margin. On the other hand, we can look back on one of the highest quality world championships in a long time. The final was also about finding the opportunities. There was no wind pattern and there was also a bit of luck involved."

After the Skiff and Nacra World Championships is before the Ilca European Championships

On his departure to Split for the Ilca European Championships, which have already opened there, Dom Tidey said when looking back on the varied Skiff World Championship week: "We should be happy. We are building up for LA 28 and have very talented young athletes. In the boat park, people were more concerned that we had three men's and five women's teams in the gold fleets. That's an announcement."

REPLAY! The live broadcast of the final races at the World Championship for 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17: