Nocher and Kalinina claim European Kiteboarding Championship titles

by Icarus Sailing Media on 21 Jun 2016 Maxime Nocher (MON, F-One/Taaroa) and Elena Kalinina (RUS, Elf/Moses) stayed flawless in the four race medal series on the final day of the competition at Poetto Beach, Cagliari.

With only the top 10 riders in the platinum fleet, the race committee of the Yacht Club Cagliari around Race Director Andy Curnow set up a six minute two lap course, providing new challenges to the fleet. With a spacious start line, tactics at the start played an important role.

Nocher went into the medal races with an comfortable lead, and took not any risk to allow any upsets.

The battle was expected between second ranked Olly Bridge (GBR, Elf/Levitaz) and Riccardo Leccese (ITA, Ozone/MikesLab) who was leading the event after the qualifying series. Only three points apart, and 40 points up for grabs throughout the four races, this was the highly anticipated match race.

However, the young Briton playedit self as well, winning two races and scoring another two and six, while Leccese lost ground in every race and finished never better than fifth.And from the back, orginially with 15 points behind expected to be the safe fourth place, Florian Trittel (ESP, Elf/KFA) showed a consistant performance and it all came down to the final race where Leccese only had to stay within four places of Trittel.

But Trittel scored a third place while Leccese lost ground in every manouvre, having him finishing in eighth, tied in points with the young spanish rider. The tie was broken through the better results in the medal series, and Trittel found himself with a surprising podium finish - a nice present at the day before his birthday.

On the womens side of things, Kalinina never got in trouble, finishing a flawless event with another four bullets. For the Russian female champion this comes as a confirmation considering that she also won the 2014 and 2015 titles.

Large crowds witnessed exciting close racing thoughout the whole week in champagne sailing conditions, leaving a smile on the face of competitors and officials alike. A complete schedule with a total of 52 races in make the 2016 an event to remember for everyone, and raised the bar to a high level for the upcoming competitions of the season.

The event came to an end with the prizegiving on the beach, and the crowning of the 2016 European Champions.