Gazprom International European Dragon Championship - Racing resumes

by Imagina on 28 Mar 2014 Today brought the second day of racing at Sanremo for the Gazprom International European Dragon Championship, organised by the Yacht Club Sanremo in collaboration with the International Dragon Association and the Italian Sailing Federation, FIV, in partnership with Gazprom International and BMW.

The 84 participating teams grappled with very unstable weather conditions today. The wind jumped about the entire morning and delayed the start of the first race of the day until 14.00 when conditions finally stabilised with a steady 10-knot westerly.

The first race was won by the Italian crew of Cloud (Giuseppe Duca, Jean Sebastien Ponce, Vittorio Zaoli) followed by the Portuguese team of Drago (Jose Sotto Mayor Matoso, Gustavo Lima, Frederico Melo) and then Bunker Boys of the Ukraine (Yevgen Braslavets, Igor Sidorov, Sergiy Timokhov).

At 16.30, the Race Committee started the second race of the day which took place in a steady seven – eight knot westerly. The course was shortened at the second windward leg because sunset was in the offing. First across the finish line were the Russians of Strange Little Girl (Dmitry Samokhin, Andrey Kirilyuk, Aleksey Bushuev) with the Danes of Debutant (Lars Hendriksen, Kleen Frithjof, Anders Bagger) in second followed by the French of Tsuica 3 (Gerard Blanc, Jean Gabriel Charton, Pierre Germain) in third.

The provisional overall standings after three races (the race of March 25 and today’s two) are as follows

1. Debutant (Denmark): Lars Hendriksen, Kleen Frithjof and Anders Bagger
2. Cloud (Italy): Giuseppe Duca, Jean Sebastien Ponce and Vittorio Zaoli
3. Bunker Queen (Ukraine): Marcus Wieser, Sergey Pugachev and Georgii Leonchuk
4. Bunker Boys (Ukraine): Yevgen Braslavets, Igor Sidorov e Sergiy Timokhov
5. Sophie (Switzerland): Pedro Andrade, Martin Westerdahl and Diogo Cayolla.

The Gazprom International European Dragon Championship continues until Saturday, March 29.

A total of 23 nations are represented: Antigua, Australia, Austria, Denmark, United Arab Emirates, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Monaco, Norway, Holland, Portugal, Russia, United States, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and YC Sanremo website