Third yellow flag for Goodison

Tom Slingsby on course to defend his Laser World title

Decreasing winds, dropping from 14 knots down to a shifty six over the afternoon, made for a difficult second day of racing at the Audi Laser World Championship in Boltenhagen, Germany.

Olympic champion and one of the top favourites in this competition, Paul Goodison (GBR) received a third yellow flag and was scored Disqualification Not Excludible (DNE) for the first race of the day. He turned the situation around by coming second in his group in race six, but his earlier blunder all but destroyed his chances of placing in the top 20 in the finals.

Tom Slingsby (AUS) is still going strong in first position after another win and a discarded eighth place, with Rasmus Myrgren (SWE) nine points behind. Andreas Geritzer (AUT) moved from eighth overall to third with a first and fifth place in today's races.

“Today was another good day of racing for me and once again we had five to six knots of breeze and it was very shifty,” said Slingsby. “In the first race of the day I had a bad start but took a risk on the left side and it paid off and I managed to round the top mark third. From there I was able to get to the lead and win comfortably,” he said. “In race two I had a really nice start but got caught a bit out of position and lost a bit of ground.

“I was coming into the top mark about 10th when I was fouled by another boat, he admitted the error and did a 720 degree turn but I lost about eight or nine positions in the process. From there it was just about trying to catch as many people as possible which I managed to do well to finish up eighth. So it was a good day, I’m sailing well and looking forward to hitting the water again tomorrow. I can’t really see the other fleets but if their racing was anything like ours it was easy to have a big score. This is all still qualifying so once we hit finals it will make it very tough to be consistent. I’m just taking each race as it comes and not looking too far ahead.”

Bad luck struck Tom Burton (AUS) who yesterday was in third place overall but two mediocre starts resulted in a 22nd and 23rd place, making him 11th overall today.

Full results here