X-Yachts Gold Cup International Championship

by X-Yachts media on 20 Jul 2008 It was a very close race when the Italian and Danish crews competed in the last race for the first ever X-41 International Championship.

Nothing was sure before the last leg of the last and 8th race in X-Yachts Gold Cup International Championship for X-41 One Design. The Italian boat WB Five was leading most of the race, and if the Danish crew in 'Hvor’f det' came worse than 8th the Cup would go to Italy. And the Danes were around 8th for most of the race.

But on the last leg the Danish Yacht advanced through the fleet and managed to come just behind the Italian Yacht over the finishing line. It means that 'Hvor’f det' with Peter Kampmann at the helm, and with the owner Finn Rants, Jens Christensen, Kasper Helweg, Jesper Riise, Lars Ive, Christian Jensen, Lars Rants, Arndt Howard and Dan Hansen had won the first cup ever for the new X-41 One Design Class.

In the last three races on Saturday the wind had turned south, increased to 22 knots and the waves had risen considerably, but only a few of the boats had breakdowns as well as only one X-41 crew found it to hard out there. The Estonian boat Bering, which had been sailing very well through all races, had a torn mainsail in the last race and went to the harbour losing its good position on the scoreboard.

The Italian WB Five with the former world champion in Maxi Racers Lorenzo Bressani as tactician and three other group 3 sailors in the crew had silver with 34 points, 7 points after the Danes. The German boat Extasy with Thomas Brügge at the helm and three pros in the crew came 3rd, 6th and 3rd in today’s racing and ended up as number three with 39 points.

The French boat Tazkeena III with Filippo Patrignani at the helm and tactician and helmsman from the America’s Cup boat BMW Oracle Bertrand Pacé as tactician did not sail fast in the rough weather and dropped down from 2nd to an overall 4th. While Italian Lady X with Flavio Favini as tactician did very well today with a 2nd, 1st and a 5th, but it was only enough for a 5th in the total. Flavio Favini was the helmsman on the Italian America’s boat Mascalzone Latino and the winning Farr40 from 2007 with the same name.
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In the other X One Design class where X-35 is fighting for the Scandinavian Championship, a Danish and a Finnish yacht fought so close in eight races that they had the same number of points after the last race. In that case it is the number of 1st that counts and since the Dane had three and the Finn had only two, Kristian Groth in AVT/People.com can put the title as Scandinavian Champion to his one month old other title as European Champion. As number two came Pekka Töytäri in Laura X with two other Finnish boats, Roxanna and Subway/Epsilon with Kimmo Vähätalo and Erkki Lempläinen as number three and four. There were 15 X-35 One Design class boats in the race.

The Netherlands has applied for have the X-Yachts Gold Cup next year.
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Full results: http://www.x-yachts.com/seeems/70234.asp