Another day in the office

Ainslie opens Finn Europeans account with two firsts

At the opening day of the Finn European Championships in Kalmar, Sweden, Ben Ainslie began to pave his way to a gold medal. Securing two first place finishes in the first two races of the regatta, Ainslie’s nearest competitor, the Croatian sailor Marin Misura is already eight points behind him.

Other main threats to the title, identified by Ainslie before the event, did not have such a good first day. Emilios Papathanasiou scored a 22,2 and is in eighth and Rafael Tujillo is in fourth with 11 points.

“We had some tricky weather systems coming down on the course today.” Ainslie explained, “The first race was really close with the lead changing several times. I tried to keep my options open and sail the shifts and came out on top. Hopefully I can get some more good results during the rest of the week.”



Nine races are scheduled throught to Sunday 14th August.

Top 20 results (73 Competitors):

	Sail No	Crew	R1	R2	Nett
1	GBR-3	Ben Ainslie	1	1	2
2	CRO-25	Marin Misura	7	3	10
3	SWE-11	Daniel Birgmark	6	5	11
4	ESP-100	Rafael Trujillo	5	6	11
5	SLO-5	Gasper Vincec	11	4	15
6	DEN-2	Jonas Høgh-Christensen (1981)	9	7	16
7	NOR-1	Peer Moberg	4	17	21
8	GRE-7	Papathanasiou Emilios	22	2	24
9	POL-12	Waclaw Szukiel	12	15	27
10	GBR-111	Edward Wright	13	14	27
11	FRA-972	Bruno Ismael	19	11	30
12	CRO-524	Ivan Kljakovic Gaspic (1984)	8	25	33
13	CZE-9	Michal Hrubý	21	13	34
14	RUS-1	Vladimir Krutskikh	3	33	36
15	NZL-14	Dan Slater	2	35	37
16	GBR-541	Chris Brittle	29	8	37
17	AUS-228	Josh Beaver	15	22	37
18	FIN-216	Tapio Nirkko	14	24	38
19	CRO-16	Emil Tomasevic	20	20	40
20	NED-6	Stefan de Vries	17	27	44