The Peckolt brothers have created an ideal starting position for their preparation for the Olympic Game in Quingdao. At the 49er World Championship in Moscow they finished sixth after 20 races. They confirmed their A-squad place and achieved the greatest success of their sailing career.
After the preliminary round they were even on the silver rank, but fell far behind in the final and had to pay tribute to the difficult, strongly turning wind in Russia. In the end they started again with a win of the day. Only eight points were missing from bronze.
“Of course we would have liked to stay on the medal spot that we had in between. But sixth place is a great result, because the top ten were our most important goal”, says Hannes Peckolt (Kiel). "Now we can continue our preparation for our big goal, the Olympic Games in Quingdao, in peace and quiet."
National coach Rigo de Nijs (Netherlands) also praised his protégés: "The boys made an enormous leap forward this year and achieved a great result here."
On the other hand, two-time Olympian Marcus Baur (Kiel) and his crew member Max Groy (Fleckeby) had bad luck. After a botched final day, the North Germans fell back to the ungrateful eleventh place and missed the squad norm by one place and four points. To what extent they can continue their successful training community with the Peckolt brothers will be decided in the coming weeks. DSV partner T-Systems wants to keep the partnership with both teams in any case.
The new 49er world champions are the silver medal winners of the Olympic Games in Athens: Rodion Lukund George Leonchuk from Ukraine secured the title for the first time and become superstars at home. World Cup silver went to the British Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks, who won bronze in Athens. The Spanish gold medal winners in Greece Iker Martinez and Xavier Fernandez finished fourth after a big race to catch up despite their involvement in the Volvo Ocean Race ("TelefonicMovistar"). In between, the Italian brother couple Sibello moved up to the bronze rank.