Australian Tornado charge

by Rob Kothe on 17 Aug 2008 While close to the shore today in the 2008 Qingdao regatta, the focus was on the Ynglings, Finns and 49ers, it was a battle for survival too for the Tornado fleet offshore.

Just one race was sailed on Course E, in heavy winds and two metre seas and Spaniards Fernando Echavarri and Anton Paz just managed to cling onto their overall series lead

Number one World ranked Tornado sailors Darren Bundock and Glen Ashby who thrive in strong breezes won the race and are now just a single point in arrears.

The Greek pairing of Iordanis Paschalidis and Konstantionos Trigonis are in third place overall although now behind the Australians and the Argentineans capsize put them back into fourth.

Dockside the Australians were pleased with today’s work. ‘We were a little apprehensive going out’ said Bundock, ‘we are ten kilo’s lighter than we’d sailed before in heavy weather, but we’d lost weight, but not skill.’

‘We came off the start with good pace and had no problems after that. Techinque was important. The waves were the big problem today. Guys were washed off the back of their boats today; we saw that happen to the British.

‘There are still six races to go so anything can happen. We are just concentrating on making sure we don’t have a bad race. '

Francesco Marcolini and Eduardo Bianchi (ITA) were second in the race, with the Dutch team of Mitch Booth and Pim Nieuwenhuis (NED) third.

It was the forecast of strong winds that caused the Dutch to baulk at using a small light weather spinnaker.

This is turning into a horror regatta for the American’s Johnny Lovell and Charlie Ogletree, they are sailing with the small gennaker and they are have an average 11th place across the four races. Ogletree went close to admitting they’d made a mistake when he mumbled about 20/20 hindsight tonight.


Tornado Results

Tornado – Overall Results
POS	Country	Skipper/Crew
			1	2	3	4	Total	Net
1	ESP	Fernando Echavarri	1	6	1	4	12	12
		Anton Paz Blanco
2	AUS	Darren Bundock	5	4	3	1	13	13
		Glenn Ashby
3	GRE	Iordanis Paschalidis	2	5	12	7	26	26
		Konstantinos Trigonis
4	ARG	Santiago Lange	13	1	1	12	27	27
		Carlos Espinola
5	NED	Mitch Booth	3	13	8	3	27	27
		Pim Nieuwenhuis
6	CAN	Oskar Johansson	8	3	9	9	29	29
		Kevin Stittle
7	ITA	Francesco Marcolini	15	9	4	2	30	30
		Edoardo Bianchi
8	BEL	Carolijn Brouwer	11	11	5	6	33	33
		Sebastien Godefroid
9	GER	Johannes Polgar	10	7	11	5	33	33
		Florian Spalteholz
10	FRA	Xavier Revil	7	2	10	16	35	35
		Christophe Espagnon				DNS
11	GBR	Leigh McMillan	6	8	13	8	35	35
		Will Howden
12	UKR	Pavel Kalinchev	4	15	6	13	38	38
		Andriy Shafranyuk
13	USA	John Lovell	14	12	7	11	44	44
		Charles Ogletree
14	AUT	Roman Hagara	12	10	14	10	46	46
		Hans Peter Steinacher
15	CHN	Youjia Luo	9	14	16	16	55	55
		Xiuke Chen			OCS	DNF