More news from the iQFoil European Championships in Lake Garda with Emma Wilson currently leading the women’s fleet! Official event report below:

A solid lead at the iQFoil European Championships in Torbole: Dutchman Luuc Van Opzeeland while Britain’s Emma Wilson leads with a narrow margin!

Saturday will decide the top ten who will enter the all important medal series!

---

Torbole, Lake Garda-Italy – Another wonderful day on Garda Trentino for the decisive days of the European Championships of the new iQFoil Olympic class, organised by Circolo Surf Torbole in collaboration with the iQFoil International class and the Italian Sailing Federation, and scheduled until Sunday. Still warm, sunny weather and a southerly wind of 12-18 knots allowed the Race Committee to schedule four more course races on the second day of the “final series” with the fleets divided into gold and silver.

With just one day to go before the last races that will decide the top ten who will go through to Sunday’s final series, important scores and gaps are beginning to emerge among the leaders in the general classification, as in the men’s category, with the inexorable race of the Dutchman Luuc Van Opzeeland, who today again posted top results (two firsts and two thirds), stretching his lead over his rivals.

They are in fact 24 points ahead of the nevertheless very good Nicolò Renna (under 21 last season), still second despite some ups and downs: having started with a sixth on the day, he scored a fourteenth, a splendid first overall and a twenty-ninth (discarded).

He remains ahead of Frenchman Goyard, who did not maintain the necessary regularity to try and attack local and Circolo Surf Torbole holder Nicolò Renna: after a second he was forced to retire in the second race of the day, recovering with a sixth, but suffering a disqualification for an early start in the fourth and final race. The points that divide the Italian from the French Olympic silver medallist are just under 12, while the fourth, Britain’s Sills is 13 points behind the third.

First under 21 is the Dutchman Max Castelein, a confirmation that the Dutch tradition in windsurfing, marked in the very first Olympics by Los Angeles gold medallist Stephan Van den Berg and taken up again by two-time Olympic gold medallist (London and Rio) Dorian Van Rijsselberghe, current president of the iQFoil class, as well as Tokyo gold medallist Kiran Badloe, is definitely continuing!

The women’s race course, located further north than the men’s, had a lighter wind of 12 knots. Also among the women, the overall leader seems to have literally taken off: Britain’s Emma Wilson leads by 20 points over defending French champion Hélène Noesmoen, who is tied with Poland’s Maja Dziarnowska. Wilson, who was involved in the RS:X for Tokyo where she won the bronze medal, seems to have got the right feeling for the iQFoil right away: in today’s four course races she scored a 3-1-2, with an early start discarded in the last race, while Frenchwoman Noesmoen was less regular with 24-2-DNF-11. On a positive day was Poland’s Dziarnowska, who after a thirteenth place kept herself in the top five with a 4-1-4. Israel’s Peleg, fifth overall, was first in the under-21 category.

Still a good day for the Italian Marta Maggetti, who is tenth, but still too seesaw to attack the top positions: after an eighteenth, she managed to return to the top positions with a good second and third, but in the fourth race of the day (eighth course race of the event) she placed twenty-first. The signs, however, remain excellent, as Marta is recovering day by day positions in the overall ranking, with a real possibility of entering the medal series scheduled for Sunday.

On Saturday there will be another final series with four races scheduled, either slalom or course race, depending on the wind strength: from the overall ranking, the top 10 will enter the medal series.

Results: https://iqeuropeans2022.sailti.com/en/default/races/race-resultsall