Due to race cancellations the day prior two were scheduled on the fourth day of the 2014 Star Worlds on Lake Garda, Italy in order to catch up on the program.
The first flight initially planned at 08:00 was delayed for two hours as the sailors waited for a safe reduction of Garda's famous southbound Peler wind. Around 10:00 race 3 had a great and clear start in good breeze with five italian teams among the top 10. GRE 8434 Emilios Papathanasiou/Antonis Tsotras led the fleet with an apparently safe advantage of 48" to ITA 8491 Diego Negri/Sergio Lambertenghi, 52" on GER 8442 Johannes Polgar and Markus Koy and 55" on BRA 8474 Lars Grael with Samuel Goncalves. At the first downwind mark of the day positions one and two were unchanged, but BRA 8210 Torben Grael overlapped GER 8442 Polgar/Koy and took third in the second leg of the race.
Afterwards race 3 was characterized by a thermal wind switch of 180 degrees from northerly to southerly and ended with the second win in a row for Lars Grael & Sam Goncalves.
After a quick lunch break, the start of race 4 was really aggressive and needed four sequences. It signalled the start of the second half of the championship, so the the pressure was on. Recalls, postponements and black flags saw 17 boats out of race 4, including BRA 8474 Lars Grael, that potentially put his challenge for the podium off.
The final race of the day, with a stable Ora until the end saw several lead changes. Husband and wife team of SUI 8364 Flavio and Anouk Marazzi from Switzerland lead for most of the race putting in a great performance with pressure from GER 8340 Stanjek/Kleen, and USA 8320 Szabo/Natucci. A little more than one leg prior to the end, Szabo with the italian crew Natucci took the lead and held on until the finish.
Two more races are scheduled for Friday 4 July and the overall leaderboard shows USA 8465 Augie Diaz and Arni Baltins three points clear of ITA 849 Negri/Lambertenghi, followed by NOR 8317 Melleby/Prada, GER 8442 Polgar/Koy and BRA 8398 Fuchs/Seifert.
George Szabo, winner of Race 4 said,
"It was a long day. We woke up at 6 in the morning and there was too much wind when we got to the yacht club after breakfast. A long postponement on land and then one very long race, the first race, it went close to the time limit so yeah, it's a good feeling to have a win in the second race."
Racing at the Star World Championship is scheduled to resume Wednesday 2 June with more live coverage at:
live.starsailors.com