Gaastra TP52 World Championship 2013 - Azzurra still in contention

by Giuliano Luzzatto on 7 Mar 2013 Gaastra TP52 World Championship 2013. A third and a fifth place are not enough for Azzurra to hold on to her leadership of the TP52 Worlds. The Italian boat trails Ran, helmed by Skype founder Niklas Zennström, by one point. Racing in Miami runs until Saturday.

The second day of racing at the Gaastra 52 World Championship in Miami was marked by a variable, northwesterly breeze, between 16 and 22 knots, with unpredictable puffs that played tricks. The day began well for Azzurra that was leading the fleet at the first weather mark after an excellent start. However, in the first run, an unexpected puff gave the fleet the opportunity to close in on Azzurra, frustrating the crew's efforts. Azzurra and Ran rounded the leeward gate neck and neck but umpires handed Azzurra a penalty. After the penalty turn was completed, Azzurra had fallen back to third, a position she maintained until the finish line, crossing behind Ran and Quantum.

In the spectacular and hard-fought second race, Azzurra rounded the first top mark in second place, neck and neck with Ran behind first-placed Quantum. In the first run however, the right tactical call to opt for the right side of the course and attack the Americans, was once again frustrated by a wind shift. Ran and Vesper that were sailing on the left sprang ahead and took the lead. In the last beat Azzurra and Gladiator were trading fourth and fifth places but at the end it was the British boat that finished fourth. Thanks to today's two bullets, Ran takes the overall lead, one point ahead of Azzurra. Quantum recovers but still sits in third place.

Quotes of the Day

Guillermo Parada, skipper: 'It was a difficult day and things didn't turn out the way we expected them. We paid dearly every error we committed but we shouldn't give more importance than what it really has. There are days when everything goes fine and days when things don't come naturally. We now have to assess what we didn't do well and focus on the seven remaining races. There is a long way ahead and the three leading boats are practically tied, so we could think we had two more days of training prior to the start of the world championship.'

Vasco Vascotto, tactician: 'In these moments I’d rather look at the brighter side of things. We are second, trailing by a mere point. The top three boats are within three points and this speaks volumes of the competitive level of the fleet. Everything is still wide open. We had two excellent starts and we were clearly ahead in the first run but the breeze decided to offer our competitors presents. That created a situation where we were handed a penalty we didn’t want to protest but we honestly think we were the ones to be prejudiced by Ran and not the other way round… Even in the second race the breeze made us pay too much for small error or better said, it greatly benefited those that found themselves on the opposite side of us, not because they chose to.'

Racing for the Gaastra 52 World Championship will continue on Thursday, March 7th at 12:30pm local time (6:30pm Italian time). We will be posting live updates from the race course on Azzurra's Facebook page and Twitter account. Live audio commentary in English is available on 52 Super Series while live tracking from Virtual Eye can be found on our official website Azzurra

Gaastra 52 World Championships (Results after four races)

1.) Rán Racing (Zennström, SWE) 10pts (7,1,1,1)
2.) Azzurra (Roemmers, ITA) 11 pts (1,2,3,5)
3.) Quantum Racing (De Vos, USA) 12pts (3,4,2,3)
4.) Gladiator (Langley, GBR) 17pts (2,6,5,4)
5.) Vesper (Swartz, USA) 19pts (5,5,7,2)
6.) Interlodge (Fragomen, USA) 22pts (4,7,4,7)
7.) Rio (Moshayedi, USA) 25pts (8, 3,8,6)
8.) Gaastra-Pro (Blees, NED) 28pts (6,8,6,8)

52 Super Series