Fight For RS:X Rio 2016 Olympic Spots To Continue As Qualification Series Concludes

A tricky offshore breeze with seaweed across course made racing tough and unpredictable. The yellow fleet leaders took off from the many, many sailors were on port, and they hit the left corner on the upwind, which paid off in the end.

The downwind strategy for the majority of the guys was to keep planing in the gusts. The top three finishers in the yellow fleet were Piotr Myszka from Poland, Thomas Goyard and Julien Bontemps from France.

A brilliant planing start on port in front of the entire Blue fleet unfortunately didn’t help JP Tobin (NZL) to finish among leaders as he went to the right side whilst the winning side appeared to be left.

In the end Pierre le Coq from France took the bullet (See the video of Pierre's interview this morning before the race) followed by Byron Kokkalanis (GRE) and Nick Dempsey (GBR).

This brought the qualification series to a close with the fleets now splitting up into gold and silver.

Women’s RS:X racers have had a lay day today, so the leaders remain the same:  Charline Picon (FRA), Bryony Shaw (GBR) and Patricia Freitas (BRA). The girl’s will continue racing in Gold and Silver fleet tomorrow.

There will be a strong battle in RS:X Men for those 18 qualification spots allocated for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games from the current World Championship. There are 23 countries in the Gold fleet (49 competitors) and 5 countries will come back home without a desired qualification spot.

Same applies to the Women’s RSX, where 15 counties got into a Gold fleet, 31 competitors in total, with only 13 nations able to qualify for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games 2016 in Santander.

The weather forecast looks quite optimistic for a good racing on Wednesday so please keep an eye on the action here in Santander at the ISAF Sailing World Championship.

RS:X Reports courtesy of Olga Maslivets, International RS:X Class Association