May 14, 2010

Open Round Robin completed

The 2 remaining flights from the Group B round robins have just been completed under quite lighter conditions than yesterday. Mads Ebler lost both his matches to Alvaro Marinho and Eric Monnin, respectively, but the 8 points he had pocketed in the previous two days gave him enough of a cushion to still finish 1st.

While there was hardly any suspense about the first place, the second place fight was full of drama. Eric Monin from Switzerland and Jacopo Pasini were the two strongest contenders and it initially appeared Pasini would have a fairly easy set of matches. Nevertheless, Pasini just handed away the 9th match to Den Boer, last classified, after sailing just 2 laps instead of the 3. At the same time Monnin scored a decisive victory over Ebler.

The final and decisive match between Monnin and Pasini was a match race exhibition by the Swiss. He had absolute control of the prestart and pushed Pasini deep into the start box, forcing him into a port-starboard incident. As a result of his action, Pasini got ahead and was red flagged by the umpires. After offloading his penalty, there was very little the Italian could to to make any significant gain and threaten Monnin.

2010 EUROSAF European Match Race Championship
OPEN Round Robins - Final Results

GROUP A (10/10 flights)
1. Morvan, FRA, 7-3
2. Lindberg, FIN, 7-3
3. Arbuzov, RUS, 6-4
4. Meister, GER, 5-5
5. Spitzayer, AUT, 3-7
6. Stanczyk, POL, 2-8

GROUP B (10/10 flights)
1. Ebler, DEN, 8-2
2. Monnin, SUI, 7-3
3. Marinho, POR, 6-4
4. Pasini, ITA, 5-5
5. Cherry, GBR, 3-7
6. Den Boer, NED, 1-9