Un Artemis d’attacco
TP52Vela 20 Ottobre 2008 Zerogradinord 0
[singlepic=588,250,170,,left]TP52 World Championship – Puerto Calero – E’ iniziato quest’oggi nelle acque di Puerto Calero il Campionato Mondiale TP52. Evento tra i più attesi dell’intera stagione agonistica, la manifestazione, apertasi con lo svolgimento di tre prove, ha chiamato a raccolta i grandi nomi della vela mondiale, già protagonisti, chi piu’ chi meno, dell’Audi MedCup 2008, conclusasi alcune settimane fa con la vittoria di Quantum Racing, il TP52 di Terry Hutchinson.
Favorito d’obbligo della vigilia, lo scafo statunitense (oggi 2-6-1) non si è sottratto alle luci della ribalta, partendo subito con il piede giusto. Meglio di lui, però, ha fatto il campione uscente Artemis (1-2-2), a bordo del quale, a curare la tattica, è il rientrante Russell Coutts.
Ottimo avvio anche per Mutua Madrilena (3-1-6), portato da Vasco Vascotto al terzo posto della classifica generale. Alle spalle dell’imbarcazione italo-cilena, lontana cinque lunghezze dalla vetta, staziona Matador (6-4-5) dell’argentino Alberto Roemmers.
Assolutamente inatteso l’ottimo inizio di entrambi gli scafi russi, saliti sino al quinto e sesto posto della classifica generale con Synergy (7-3-10) di Sergey Pichugin e Valars (4-8-9) di Sergey Chetvtsov. Dietro di loro, in settima posizione, è attestato Audi TP52 Powered by Q8 (9-11-3) di Riccardo Simoneschi, bravo a resistere all’attacco di El Desafio (5-7-11) e di Bribon (10-12-4), entrambi sotto le aspettative al pari di Platoon (8-9-12) di Jochen Schuemann, per il quale il Mondiale appare già compromesso.
Per seguire le regate in diretta clicca qui.
Per consultare la classifica clicca qui.
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Video promozionale. Video courtesy TP52 World Championship.
TP52 World Championship, Artemis is the first leader
[singlepic=589,250,170,,left][TP52 world Championship Press Release]The current TP52 World Champion started this year’s edition of the championship on a strong footing with a first and two seconds in shifty, tricky and quite light conditions, as was expected earlier in the morning. The opening day of the event was clearly marked by a breeze that swung left and right, sometimes by more than 60 degrees, following the movements of the clouds that covered the skies over Lanzarote and Fuerteventura. The breeze ranged from 6 to 12 knots but direction was a real gamble and the tough race track off Puerto Calero saw three different winners today.
The first race of the day turned into a match-race between Artemis and Quantum Racing, with the current World Champion crossing the finish line ahead of the Americans. Both boats together with Mutua Madrileña lead the race from the start by correctly opting for the left side of the course. In fact Vasco Vascotto’s yacht was behind Artemis during the first half of the race but had to relinquish its spot to Terry Hutchinson. The turning point came in the second beat when Russell Coutts on Artemis and Morgan Larson on Quantum Racing called again tactics right on the spot and built a considerable lead over the rest of the fleet, reaching 200 meters at times. In the race’s final leg Artemis kept on the left while Quantum tried to get better breeze in the center but to no avail. Torbjorn Tornqvist helmed the Swedish boat to victory.
The story in the second race changed radically as the breeze shifted to the right by more than 30 degrees. El Desafío, TAU Ceramica Andalucia and Bigamist were over the line early, while Mutua Madrileña, Synergy, Artemis and Quantum had a clean start. Flavio Favini at the helm of Mutua Madrileña got the control of the race despite the attacks from both Artemis and Synergy, even rounding the leeward gate 45 seconds ahead of Artemis. The three leading positions didn’t change for the rest of the race, resulting in a second for Artemis and an excellent third for Russian Synergy, with kiwi sailor Cameron Dunn calling tactics.
With the breeze dropping to 6 knots and another shift, this time back to the left, the race committee fired the starting gun for the third time. As in the first race, the left paid handsomely and Cristabella with Quantum got off ahead of the fleet. The Anglo-American pair could have held on to the top two spots till the end of the race but disaster stroke Cristabella when their spinnaker touched the pin end buoy in the very last stretch of the race. The British boat had to avoid a large spectator fleet in order to carry out their 360-degree turn and as a result dropped back to the bottom.
Quantum was first, with Artemis second after a great recovery in the last leg while Dean Barker helmed Bribón in third place, their best finish of what was a tough day for the Spanish King’s boat.
They said:
Torbjorn Tornqvist, owner and helmsman of Artemis: “It was an excellent start for Artemis, it couldn’t have been better. We had good boat speed, we got the wind correctly and in general Russell made excellent tactical calls but, of course, Quantum is a very dangerous opponent and we have to take the event race by race; it’s too early to make any prediction. We have a good boat and fine crew work and as a result there is no reason we shouldn’t be optimistic. Still, it’s going to be a very tough fight”.
Terry Hutchinson, helmsman of Quantum Racing: “It was a very good day for us and we start the event second placed. The third race was the toughest one, we were at the back of fleet and it was impossible to climb back as much as we would have liked and finished sixth. Picking the shifts was the key to today’s races. We even had a 90-degree change in direction within 5 minutes and we were left with no wind. In such a case you just try to do damage control. Nevertheless, we had a very good day overall”.
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