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02 Sep 2010

Patience/Bithell and Conti/Micol Hammer Their Way To The Front

This news belongs to
2010 Open 470 European Championships
ALL EVENT INFORMATION

Istanbul produced sun, wind and waves for a spectacular day three at the 2010 Open 470 European Championships. With the warm wind pulsing from 15-20 knots, it also provided the medicine that some teams needed to haul themselves up from a shaky previous day’s racing in the lighter, shiftier breezes.

Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell, who opened their account with a black flag disqualification, won yesterday’s following race. And then today in the big breeze the Brits put the hammer down to fire in three bullets in their qualifying fleet.

Yesterday was a similar story for Italian girls, the defending European Champions Giulia Conti and Giovanna Micol, mucking up the first race with a comedy of errors and then making amends with a win in the next. Their big breeze outing today was almost as good as Patience and Bithell’s, with Conti and Micol winning the first two heats and coming a close second in the next.

With the discard now coming into play, the British move to the front of the men’s fleet and the Italians have become the leading ladies. Bithell was pleased, but not overly surprised, at scoring a perfect day on the windy race course. “Three races, three bullets. In those conditions, when Luke and myself press the right buttons we’re very hard to beat,” said Bithell, who attributed most of their success to just plain old boatspeed, and a little bit of smart thinking. “It is very easy to be smart when you’re so fast. There were some oscillations but mainly the boatspeed pulled us through, bought us a good lane out of the start every time.”

Bithell’s not counting his chickens quite yet, though. “Still a long way to go, and another black flag would probably see us drop outside the top 10. But if there was ever a day where you could say ‘champagne conditions’, 16 knots breeze, 25 degree temperatures, waves, sunshine, today was the day. Perfect.”

Conti was almost as pleased with her day, except she was trying to massage her forearms back into life after a particularly hard day for the 470 helms. Big waves demanded a lot of mainsheet work upwind and a lot of pumping downwind. “I have some problems with my arms and it’s something I need to get fixed after the season is finished,” said Conti, who always puts her heart and soul into every race she competes in. “Today makes up for yesterday,” she said. “We were pretty fast, surfing a lot downwind, and it was warm. A perfect day, I loved it.”

Ingrid Petitjean and Nadege Douroux hauled themselves up the rankings today too, the French team taking the last race off the Italians and coming second in the other two. “We didn’t expect it to be so windy, but it was up to 18 knots, maybe 20, and big waves, good fun downwind,” said Petitjean, hiding behind her spray-deflecting sunglasses. “A 470 helm can’t see anything on a windy day. Today, my eyes were Nadege.”

Sylvia Vogl and Carolina Flatscher of Austria are back in the 470 for the first time in 14 months, and had a good day despite their lack of practice. “Really nice conditions, but everything hurts,” said Vogl. “The waves were crazy, a lot of work upwind and downwind.” They lie in 7th overall.

In the men’s fleet, Patience and Bithell hold the lead with defending European Champions from Croatia, Sime Fantela and Igor Marenic, lying in 2nd overall. “Luke Patience was hard to catch today, and we were fast downwind but not so good upwind,” said Fantela. “Tomorrow we have one more qualifying race and our aim is to stay in the top five, maybe top 10, so we carry through a good set of scores into the Gold Fleet.”

Tomorrow the race committee plans to hold the final qualifying race for the men’s fleet in the morning, before they are divided into Gold and Silver fleets, while the women continue to race a straight series in one division.


The 2010 Open 470 European Championships conclude with the Medal Race on 6 September. The regatta is organised by The Istanbul Sailing Club in co-operation with the International 470 Class Association and the Turkish Sailing Federation.

You can follow the racing live online, via the GPS tracking system, which will be displayed here: www.onlineracetrack.net

470 Men/Mixed - Provisional Results After 5 Races

 

Pos Sailno Crew Pts R1 R2 R3 R4 R5
1 GBR 844 Luke PATIENCE, Stuart BITHELL b07 4,0 (bfd) 1 1 1 1
2 CRO 83 Sime FANTELA, Igor MARENIC b02 9,0 2 2 2 -4 3
3 ISR 7 Gideon KLIGER, Eran SELA b01 10,0 1 1 -8 5 3
4 FRA 44 Pierre LEBOUCHER, Vincent GAROS b12 16,0 3 -10 4 5 4
5 FRA 7 Nicolas CHARBONNIER, Baptiste MEYER-DIEU b05 17,0 3 -19 7 2 5
6 NED 77 Steven LEFEVRE, Steven KROL b16 17,0 2 -12 5 3 7
7 GRE 1 Panagiotis MANTIS, Pavlos KAGIALIS b08 19,0 9 7 -13 1 2
8 GER 49 Lucas ZELLMER, Heiko SEELIG b14 19,0 6 4 -7 2 7
9 GRE 165 Panagiotis KAMPOURIDIS, Theodoros POLYCHRONIDIS 025 19,0 4 -10 4 3 8
10 AUT 3 Matthias SCHMID, Florian REICHSTÄDTER b10 23,0 (bfd) 5 3 6 9

 

  470 Women - Provisional Results After 5 races

Pos Sailno Crew Pts R1 R2 R3 R4 R5
1 ITA 23 Giulia CONTI, Giovanna MICOL b02 5,0 -16 1 1 1 2
2 FRA 4 Ingrid PETITJEAN, Nadege DOUROUX b01 12,0 7 -14 2 2 1
3 FRA 12 Emmanuelle ROL, Hélène DEFRANCE b03 15,0 1 3 4 7 -8
4 DEN 143 Henriette KOCH, Lene SOMMER b04 16,0 6 4 3 -11 3
5 FRA 9 Camille LECOINTRE, Mathilde GERON b06 20,0 3 5 -11 8 4
6 GER 66 Annina WAGNER, Marlene STEINHERR b09 27,0 8 6 -24 4 9
7 AUT 431 Sylvia VOGL, Carolina FLATSCHER b22 33,0 -18 13 7 3 10
8 ISR 311 Gil COHEN, Dana MAMRIEV b05 35,0 2 16 -19 10 7
9 SLO 64 Tina MRAK, Teja CERNE b16 37,0 5 -18 8 6 18
10 CRO 111 Enia NINCEVIC, Romana ZUPAN b14 38,0 -22 2 6 17 13

More Information:

European Championship Website
European Championship News
European Championship 
Photo Gallery
Overall Results

Story by: Andy Rice
Images: Luke Patience and Stuart Bithell (GBR) in action in Istanbul, Henriette Koch and Lene Sommer (DEN), Steven LeFevre and Steven Krol (NED) © Coskun Aydin