Open Finn European Championship 2024 at Yacht Club de Cannes - Day 1
by Robert Deaves 22 Oct 17:23 NZDT
18-25 October 2024
Open Finn Europeans begins - Cannes it get any better?
Italy's Alessandro Marega is the early leader at the 2024 Finn Open European Championship at the Yacht Club de Cannes after three great races in a building breeze. He won all three of his group races to sit five points clear of France's Laurent Hay with Valerian Lebrun in third. Lebrun took two race wins while the other race win went to The Netherlands' Peter Peet.
There are 152 sailors from 22 nations taking part in the biggest Finn European Championship of all time. Racing is taking place in two groups over five days in Cannes. While the forecast for the week looked challenging, Monday produced sublime conditions with sunny skies, 10-14 knots from the east, nice waves and simply great sailing conditions in a great boat. The first race took a while to get away but after that the following two races all got away first time.
Yellow group started first and was dominated by Marega, the bronze medalist at the Finn Gold Cup. He didn't always round first, but his downwind speed took him to the front to win by a range of margins. World No 1, Laurent Hay, picked up a couple of seconds, while Hungary's Kristof Kaiser put in a great day with a third and second to end the day in fifth. Poland's Bartosz Szydlowski also performed well, twice port tacking the fleet from the pin to once round the top mark in first place
In the Blue group, Lebrun was the standout sailor with two race wins following a seventh in the opening race, which was won by Peter Peet. Behind him, there were many in contention. Britain's Nick Craig had a great day to close out with a third and second, while third best was Portugal's Filipe Silva.
Marega said, "Today I had the perfect day scoring three bullets. The conditions out there were amazing with 12 knots of wind. Hopefully I will continue sailing like this for the rest of the championship. The most challenging thing today was the downwind because the waves weren't aligned with the wind and they were hard to surf.
"For tomorrow, I am not sure I haven't seen the forecast, but it looks pretty light."
Lebrun added, "We got really lucky today. The forecast was for very light wind. Instead we had some incredible conditions with 12 knots and a big swell and we got three races with free pumping conditions, which was a bit unexpected considering the conditions that we had a couple of days ago. Today I was struggling a little bit with my start and I don't know why but both races I was really fast downwind with the free pumping so I was always able to catch up some boats.
"It's incredible to have 152 boats here at the Finn Europeans. It's something that I would've never dreamt of a couple of years ago especially here in France but this only proves how dynamic the class is. Also, we have more and more young sailors coming in and this is obviously very good for the class."
Racing continues Tuesday with two races scheduled from 12.00
Results after Day 1: (top ten, three races)
1 ITA 1103 Alessandro MAREGA 3pts
2 FRA 75 Laurent HAŸ 8pts
3 FRA 111 Valérian LEBRUN 9pts
4 GBR 790 Nick CRAIG 10pts
5 HUN 808 Kristóf KAISER 11pts
6 POR 21 Filipe SILVA 14pts
7 POL 6 Bartosz SZYDLOWSKI 15pts
8 NED 6 Martijn van MUYDEN 17pts
9 SUI 7 Christoph BURGER 20pts
10 AUS 22 Paul McKENZIE 20pts