Sportsboat Hot Shots

The ultra windy J/70 European Championship saw several female sailors and young teams excel. SUE PELLING discovers their winning ways

- Sue Pelling

When Claudia Rossi on Petite Terrible kicked off proceedings with a win in the first race of the Alfa Romeo sponsored J/70 class Open European Championship, little could she, and her Italian team, have predicted the extent of the excitement that was to follow.

Winds gusted up to 40kt, and most of the races started in 25kt – the class maximum permitted wind speed – which meant that the Solent during the first week in June was certainly no place for the faint-hearted.

Impressively, Rossi (24) and team Petite Terrible (Matteo Mason, Michele Paolini, Simone Spangard and Verena Weber) concluded the week with a consistent scoreline including three firsts, four seconds, and a third and was able to discard their worst result of a fourth from Race 8. They won the European Championships for the second time in a row, with an eight point clear advantage over Noticia, skippered by Jose María Torcida Seghers and his Spanish team (Robin Imaz Creo, Luis Martin Cabiedes, Pablo Rosano Jimenez, and Rayco Tabares Alvarez).

WOMEN’S TEAMS

In a fleet that included Olympic medallists and world champions from other classes, it was interesting to note that a third of the 42 competing teams sported mixed or full women’s teams including three women helmsmen in both the Open and Corinthian European Championship divisions. These three female helms all finished in the top 10, which not only demonstrated the class suitability across the spectrum, but also, and importantly, proved that the more testing the conditions, the more likely women are to give the men a good run for their money!