Melges 24 World Championship - Winners announced...
by Melges 24 on 5 Aug 2017
It was a great day for the Hungarian FGF Sailing Team with Robert Bakoczy in helm winning the final race of the championship Pierrick Contin
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The 20th edition of the Melges 24 World Championship just came to an end in Helsinki, with a series of eleven races that challenged the crews with weather conditions that ranged from light wind to heavy breeze and seas.
After the success obtained in the Worlds of Torbole in 2012, exactly five years ago on August 4th, the couple helmsman-tactician Fracassoli-Fonda contributed to the success of Italian entry Maidollis by Gianluca Perego with also Giovanni Ferrari, also a part of the 2012 winner team, and Stefano Lagi onboard.
The Italian crew has been able to sail very consistent races, with placements that only once went below the 10th position: they closed the series with a total of 35 points and a margin of 23 points over the second classified. In day two of racing they also achieved a record for the Melges 24 Worlds, by winning all the races that were sailed in that day. They succeed in the gold book to the Irish Embarr by Conor Clarke, who won the penultimate edition of the Melges 24 World Championship, held in Miami in December 2016 and can hold the historical perpetual trophy of the Melges Performance Sailboats for one year.
Vice-World Champion is American Monsoon by Mike Buckley with Bruce Ayres in helm and Mark Ivey as a coach, which has all through the series battled to maintain a podium placement: the two bullets scored in the series helped Monsoon's holding tight to the silver medal. The American crew is in fact followed, in the final ranking, by Kevin Welch's Mikey, with a margin of just three points.
The American entry Mikey managed to climb over Italian Andrea Racchelli's Altea in the last day of the Championship: the crew already winner of the Melges 24 European Series, then, finished the event in fourth place, while the top-five was completed by another Italian entry, Taki 4 by Marco Zammarchi, which also received another important prize.
The boat with Niccolò Bertola in helm, in fact, managed to confirm itself for the second year in a row as Melges 24 Corinthian World Champion, after the success obtained in Miami and will keep the perpetual Henri Samuel's Trophy another year. The crew was made, as past year, by Niccolò Bertola, Giacomo Fossati, Marco Zammarchi, Matteo De Chiara and Giovanni Bannetta and Niccolò Bianchi as the coach.
Silver medal in the Corinthian division goes to an historical component of the Melges 24 Class, Gill Race Team by Miles Quinton with Geoff Carveth helming. The Estonian entry Lenny, already Corinthian World Champion in Melges 24, closes the 20th edition of the Melges 24 World Championship in third position.
After a brief summer rest, the fleet will lead to Medemblik, the Netherlands for the penultimate event of Melges 24 European Sailing Series 2017, that is going to conclude in October in Luino, Italy.
2018 will be another busy season, too: the dates have already been announced for the first ever Melges 24 Worlds to be held in Canada - Victoria, British Columbia from May 31st to June 8th and 2018 Melges 24 Europeans, that will be hosted in Riva del Garda, Italy from August 3rd to 10th.
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