At the halfway point of the Starboot World Championship, Germany has to worry about a starting place at the Olympic Games. In the third of six races, Marc Aurel Pickel from Kiel and Ingo Borkowski from Potsdam only finished 32nd and slipped to 14th place in the intermediate ranking.
However, they remained the best Germans nine points ahead of Alexander Hagen / Jochen Wolfram (Hamburg / Damme), who moved up to 15th place on Thursday (April 29th) with their 22nd. In the nation standings, however, five countries that have not yet qualified for Athens are ahead of them. If that were the final result after six races, the German Sailing Association (DSV) would not be able to send anyone to Greece, because there are only four places left.
"At the moment, these are all just arithmetic games," said Marc Pickel, "the strings follow after five races, then a lot of things are mixed up anyway." However, the 32-year-old was not satisfied with his performance I had a lucky hand.”On the starting cross they got stuck in a wind hole in the middle of the runway when the winds waned. Afterwards, the chase on the downwind section was thwarted by a change in the wind.
Overall, the sailing conditions on the fifth day of the World Cup were rather moderate. Initially, the participants waited again for three and a half hours for constant wind, which then only blew with force four at the start. As the race progressed, there were numerous strong pressure differences on the course. The British ex-world champion Iain Percy won with Steve Mitchell and improved to fourth place. The Swedes Frederik Lööf / Anders Ekström kept the lead because the winners of the day Mark Neeleman / Peter van Niekerk from the Netherlands were disqualified because of early starts. Michael Koch and Markus Koy from Hamburg finished 28th and are 21 in total.
