Two points behind the bronze medal winners Xavier Revil and Christophe Espagnon (France, 76 points), the Kiel Tornado sailors Johannes Polgar and Florian Spalteholz narrowly missed their first world championship medal in front of LRochelle. Nevertheless, it was the greatest sailing success in the career of the North German Olympic hopes.
The World Cup victory was decided at the green table. The Spaniards Fernando Echevarri and Anton Paz managed to convince the jury with video evidence that they were not among the 22 teams that started too early in the last race. Through the compensation granted (points average of their previous series) they won ahead of the British Leigh McMillan and William Howden.
"We are very happy and glad that the tension of the last few days is finally over," said Johannes Polgar from the NRV Olympic Team. With the new T-Systems logo on the mainsail, the helmsman and his new bowman had already taken the lead in the intermediate championship ranking before they finished the high-class series in fourth place.
Congratulations from DSV sports director Hans Sendes promptly came from the Hamburg DSV headquarters: “Jojo and Florian have only been sailing together in the same boat since this year. You can be more than satisfied when you get such a result.”With fourth place in the World Cup, Polgar / Spalteholz have already secured their place in the A-team and in the Olympic Team Beijing 2005.
On the other hand, the three-time tornado world champion Roland Gäbler (Tinglev / Denmark) and his Kiel bowman Gunnar Struckmann caught a black series. The duo did not get past 22nd place (151 points).
Here is Roland Gäbler's report: “Let's start with the good news. After the Grade One Holland regatt at the end of May on the IJsselmeer, we could hardly believe our eyes. We had slipped to 1st place in the ISAF world rankings. With the No. 1 at the bow we also went into the races of the Tornado World Championships in front of LRochelle. We had prepared very intensively for this with our training team in the sailing area over the past few months
But the training shouldn't be of much use to us. We had a catastrophic start to the World Championship and finished 40th and 31st in the first two races. Sure, you have to say that the winds were a bit crazy on the first day and sometimes turned chaotically.
But even in such a situation you have to keep track of things and react tactically correctly. We couldn't do that, and it was a shock right at the beginning of the series that we had to recover from quickly.
We did this well and in the next races we placed 2-6-6 with a constant sea breeze (3 Beaufort). That had rebuilt us enormously. Especially since it was the conditions that we had prepared for in training.
But the joy should not last long, because with the individual places 33-12-31-29 and the overall place 22 the World Cup ended with a complete disaster. We neither found the tactically correct concept, nor was the chosen sail fast enough for the tip in light winds again.
We had prepared very intensively and professionally for the World Cup over the past four weeks. Two training blocks in LRochelle (April and May), then the Grade One Holland Regatt (6th place), then the Volvo Champions Race (4th place) and the training before the actual World Championship. Maybe this was too much of a good thing.
We wanted to make everything perfect. But we have to realize that professional preparation is not a guarantee of success. We didn't manage to implement the experiences from the training and got bogged down with the selection of materials. Many other top teams seemed to have made this mistake and crashed too.
Now it remains to be seen how we can get out of this sporting defeat. It is only in such a situation that it becomes apparent how good the team is. We will now systematically analyze the mistakes and try to make up for this bad World Cup result at the European Championships in Sweden in August. But now we hardly have time to breathe. The first races on the Kiel Outer Fjord start on Wednesday."
Overall result Tornado World Championship 2005
1. Fernando Echevarri / Anton Paz (ESP), 43.9 points 2. Leigh McMillan / William Howden (GBR), 48 points3. Xavier Revil / Christophe Espagnon (FRA), 76 points4. Johannes Polgar / Florian Spalteholz (Kiel), 78 points5. Yann Guichard / Alexandre Guyader (FRA), 83 points6. Aaron McIntosh / Carlos Espinol (ARG), 86 points22. Roland Gäbler / Gunnar Struckmann (Tinglev / Kiel), 151 points