Singaporean and Slovenian Sailors Open With Double Wins At Open Optimist Europeans

Ryan Yee Kang Teo of Singapore dominated the boy’s fleet on the opening day of the Windows 2013 IODA Open European Championship in Balatonfoldvar, Hungary.

The Singaporean won both races in the fleet whilst reigning European Champion Mara Turin (SLO) showed the girls it will be no easy task to take the title from her.

The Slovenians power looked really strong in the opening days conditions with Lara Poljsak lying in second place with Eefje Nissen (NED) in third.

The heavy air of the previous day vanished on the first day of racing and a nice 10 knot north westerly breeze welcomed the fleet in the morning. After all groups finished the first race the wind started to die and shift to the south. Finally it settled in a south westerly direction at 5-7 knots which was suitable to complete the second race.

The 248-strong fleet from 40 countries is split into five groups (3 for the boys, 2 for the girls). Group assignments change every day based on the rankings in order to create as even groups as possible regarding strength. The fleet behaved quite well during the starts of the first race, there was only one start under black flag. The kids became more aggressive in the afternoon; there were 20 start attempts in total which caused several early start disqualifications.

Please check the event website www.optieuro2013.com for results, twitter channel, live video streaming from the course, official notice and information board.