Aarhus, Denmark 24 July – 5 August

If you can’t win the regatta then perhaps winning the final race is the next best thing. That’s what Jan Saugmann and Morten Ramsbæk did today in the final heat of the SAP 505 World Championships in Aarhus, Denmark.

While new World Champions Wolfgang Hunger and Julien Kleiner had the luxury of packing up their boat a day early, the rest of the 126 competitors ventured out into a light-airs Bay of Aarhus for one last gate start, one final opportunity to move themselves up the rankings.

Early leaders of today’s race were the Americans who had led the regatta after day one, 1999 World Champion Howie Hamlin and Andy Zinn. Defending in such tricky conditions was tough, however, as Jorgen and Jacob Bojsen-Møller took over the lead for a while. But it was the ‘Fast Danes’, so called because they’re fast, but also because it’s easier for foreigners to say rather than pronounce their names – Saugmann and Ramsbæk – who took the lead when it mattered, beating the Bojsen-Møller brothers by a few metres.

Saugmann and Ramsbæk, the 2007 World Champions, had high hopes of winning on home waters and had trained extensively in Aarhus leading up to the Worlds. They were leading race one almost a week ago when gear failure put them out of action for heats one and two. It wasn’t until today when the two discards in the nine-race series kicked in, and their final heat victory shot them back up the rankings to 6th overall.

One place in front was Meike Schomaeker, the highest placed female competitor ever in the distinguished history of the 505 World Championship, crewed by three-time former World Champion Holger Jess. A 3rd in today’s race cemented the Germans’ 5th place in the overall standings. “We are really pleased,” said Jess, “and really happy that our training partners [Hunger and Kleiner] won overall. Our good boatspeed only came from our strong partnership in training.”

Hunger and Kleiner sailed at a level beyond any other competitor. Even Hunger himself couldn’t quite explain how he had made sense of such tricky conditions in the latter stages of the regatta. “It was from watching things, the clouds, the other boats, but also from a feeling that I had, maybe an intuition,” he said. It seems the three-time 470 Olympian hasn’t lost any of the sharpness that brought him two 470 world titles, not to mention his three previous 505 world titles won with Jess in the front of the boat.

What pleased Hunger particularly about victory in Denmark was that the wide variety of wind conditions made this the most all-round test of any 505 World Championship in which he has competed. It has also been the most widely followed 505 championship ever, thanks to the live coverage delivered by a team in Aarhus, consisting primarily of volunteers and sailing enthusiasts.

Event organiser Thomas Capitani from Sailing Aarhus said visits to the website have increased day by day, with more than 37,000 unique viewers registering more than 125,000 page views, and with each visit lasting an average of 5 minutes 24 seconds. “In television terms that equates to a very big commercial break, but what’s even more important is that this many people are spending more than five minutes at a time, watching and getting excited about sailing. In Aarhus, we have shown that with a relatively simple set-up, cheap equipment, you can do a great media job, and you can achieve high numbers of worldwide media coverage.”

Just as Aarhus’ extensive use of GPS tracking software in the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds two years ago has led to much wider uptake of tracking technology in sailing, Capitani hopes the 505 mashup experiment will also inspire others to take on similar media projects. “We are doing it again in two weeks for the Danish National Youth and Junior Championships, with about 500 boats on five race courses, and next year we plan to do a similar job for the A-Class Catamaran World Championships.

“What we did this week can be done anywhere, although we’re very fortunate to have a number of things working very well for us in Aarhus. We have 3G mobile coverage across all our race courses; we have strong partnerships with small companies such as StreamFactory and TracTrac, and the support of the Active Institute from the University and a City that wants to attract sailing events here on an ongoing basis.”

Rasmus Johnsen from the Active Institute has endured some long days keeping all the technology working, but has drawn his strength and motivation from the enthusiastic response around the world. “It has been a very good week, but we don’t want to say this is the definitive way to do things. This has been an experiment in bringing sailing to a wider audience using affordable means, and we would love it if other people take the ‘Aarhus model’ and develop it further for the benefit of the sport.”

Any class association, sailing club or event organiser that is interested in finding out more about how Johnsen and his colleagues put the 505 ‘mashup’ together can contact Johnsen at his email address: rj@activeinstitute.dk

The SAP 505 World Championship took place in Aarhus, Denmark, from 30 July to 5 August. This regatta was the latest in a series of major sailing championships hosted by the City of Aarhus over the past 10 years, with the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds having taken place here in 2008 and with a number of major championships scheduled in the near future, including the A-Class Catamaran Worlds in 2011 and the 29er and 29erXX World Championship in 2013.

The 2010 SAP 505 World Championship was organised by Sailing Aarhus in cooperation with Sport Event Denmark, Sport Aarhus Event and the Danish Sailing Association. With a strong focus on innovation and new technology to promote sailing to a wider audience, Denmark and the City of Aarhus are bidding for the ISAF Worlds 2014, the most prestigious regatta next to the Olympic Games.

It didn’t matter what the Aarhus weather threw at them, Wolfgang Hunger and Julien Kleiner’s team work coped with the most extraordinary conditions to win the SAP 505 World Championships with a race to spare.

On a day that produced every breeze from a flat calm to a Force 6, and wind shifts of 90 degrees or more, the Germans demonstrated supernatural mastery over conditions that had the rest of the 126 competitors utterly confused.

The race started in light winds and Ian Pinnell and Ian Mitchell from Great Britain led for the first lap. The duelling contenders for the overall title, the Germans and the Danish Bojsen-Møller brothers, were well back in the fleet. Up the second beat, however, Pinnell and the leading pack fell into a hole as the breeze filled in from the left.

At the second windward mark, there was a new leader. Wolfgang Hunger and Julien Kleiner had come back from the dead (or about 40th place to be more precise) to lead handsomely around the mark. “I saw a cloud on the left and saw the boats at the back of the fleet running very deep downwind, so I thought there might be a shift,” he explained.

However the breeze was barely blowing, only coughing into life every now and then, and the race committee abandoned the race. “I was very disappointed,” said Hunger, not surprisingly.

After waiting some time for the wind to settle, the race committee initiated a new start sequence at 5.05pm, appropriately enough. With a big dark cloud to the right, the majority of the fleet elected to start late out of the gate in the hope of picking up a right-hand windshift.

For the second time that day, Americans Howie Hamlin and Andy Zinn opened the gate as pathfinder, tacking just as the gate closed at the 6 minute mark. Little did they realise that as they tacked, it was square on the face of none other than Hunger and Kleiner who had left their start as late as possible for that enticingly dark cloud.

Perhaps, though, the Americans had unwittingly done the Germans a favour. After tacking off further to the right, Hunger hooked into a good line of breeze pouring down from the cloud and led around the mark by 20 seconds. The Bojsen-Møllers were back in 6th but dropped out of the top 10 as they tried some extreme tactics in a bid to gain some leverage on the Germans. Then the thunder and lightning arrived, and the wind accelerated to more than 20 knots in the gusts, and the Americans – who love the breeze – charged through the fleet.

They couldn’t catch Hunger though, or at least not until it mattered, as Edward Conrads and Brian Haines stole the lead from the Germans in the dying stages of the race, as the wind also died. Hunger fought like mad to get back past the Americans but crossed the finish line two seconds back. No celebrations of a fourth world title, not yet. “I was disappointed because we were counting and thought we had to win the race to be sure of winning the Worlds,” said Hunger. “Then we counted again and realised we had done enough to win.”

So Hunger wins his fourth world title, although it’s the first for Kleiner. “It’s great to win with Julien,” said Hunger, also a two-time 470 World Champion. “He’s a very good crew, a smart sailor. It is fun to sail the 505 fast in every wind condition, and this week in Denmark we have had every condition, and then there are the tactics. All of these things make the 505 interesting.”

Hunger is one of the greatest Olympic sailors never to have won an Olympic medal. Jorgen Bojsen-Møller, on the other hand, remains the Olympic Champion who still has not been able to win a 505 world title. “I think we have sailed OK this week, but it wasn’t good enough. Maybe we should have done more training. We were very busy trying to get a new boat finished, but maybe we should have trained instead. We will come back another time to see if we can win the 505 Worlds.”

While the new World Champions will stay ashore tomorrow, the rest of the fleet will go out into the Bay of Aarhus one more time to decide the final positions in the championship.

The SAP 505 World Championship takes place in Aarhus, Denmark, from 30 July to 5 August. This regatta is the latest in a series of major sailing championships hosted by the City of Aarhus over the past 10 years, with the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds having taken place here in 2008 and with a number of major championships scheduled in the near future, including the A-Class Catamaran Worlds in 2011.

The 2010 SAP 505 World Championship is organised by Sailing Aarhus in cooperation with Sport Event Denmark, Sport Aarhus Event and the Danish Sailing Association. With a strong focus on innovation and new technology to promote sailing to a wider audience, Denmark and the City of Aarhus are bidding for the ISAF Worlds 2014, the most prestigious regatta next to the Olympic Games.

With thanks to SAP’s Timo Elliott you now can find…..

Grand thanks to Timo Elliott for the bonus SAP Xcelsius dashboard created as search engine to find photos of the sailors, their 5O5s. Search by bow number, sail number, or country. Thanks, Timo! A picture is worth 1000 words, and time saved with this useful tool!

Jorgen and Jacob Bojsen-Møller sailed a magnificent day in the most tactically challenging conditions yet seen at the SAP 5O5 World Championships, taking place in Aarhus, Denmark.

The Danish brothers needed to sail out of their skins if they were to stop the German team of Wolfgang Hunger and Julien Kleiner running away with the regatta. The Bojsen-Møllers scored a 2nd and 1st in light offshore breezes which were shifting up to 40 degrees from the north-west.

“It was a bit scary sailing today,” said Jorgen, “because the wind was very, very shifty. So I’m happy not to have done a bad race. At one point we thought Hunger had already won, but actually he is not there yet.” The Germans now sit on 12 points overall, after scoring a 5,2 today, with the Bojsen-Møllers now on 14 points. With two races to go, and with two discards from a nine-race series, Hunger cannot afford too many mistakes, although mistakes are not usually in his repertoire.

Having said that, the three-time 5O5 World Champion came back from some very deep positions – calling on all his experience to get himself back into contention. “We had some scary moments today,” said Hunger, “but we did some good work to recover from bad positions at the first mark, coming back from 25th to 5th in the first race, and then 17th up to 2nd in the other race.”

The biggest concern today for the series leaders was, surprisingly, a lack of speed out of the start, as Julien Kleiner explained. “We were fast downwind but our upwind performance was very poor. Still, we have been really enjoying sailing here. What’s really good is we have had two strong wind days, one medium day and one light wind day, so everyone gets a chance to sail in their favourite conditions. You definitely need to be an all-round sailor to do well in Aarhus, and fortunately we like sailing in all types of weather.”

Kleiner’s girlfriend, Meike Schomaeker, continued her progress up the fleet. Crewed by former 5O5 World Champion Holger Jess, she now sits in 5th place overall despite also complaining of a lack of upwind speed in today’s tricky conditions. Sitting ahead of her in 4th is 1999 World Champion from the USA, Howie Hamlin crewed by Andy Zinn, and continuing to lie in 3rd overall are former World Champions Ian Pinnell and Ian Mitchell from Great Britain. The Brits kept themselves in championship contention with a last-gasp race win in today’s first race, moving to within 5 points of Hunger, although a 17th in the next race has knocked them back again. Such is the points gap in front of and behind them, the Brits look destined to stay in the bronze medal position for the remainder of the regatta.

Certainly Hunger is beginning to view this championship as a match race against Bojsen-Møller, who would dearly love to add the prize of a 5O5 world title to his trophy cabinet, which includes a gold and bronze Olympic medal from his days in the Flying Dutchman class. “In fact we already started match racing the Bojsen-Møllers on the previous day, and we will be looking closely for them for the next races,” said Hunger.

Will the superior upwind boatspeed of the Danish or the better downwind speed of the Germans be the deciding factor? Both teams have looked good across the wind range, so there isn’t much to separate them. “It’s good sailing here,” said the German. “Today the situation was shifty winds which was very difficult, but you have to deal with the winds that you get. Overall, across all the different winds we’ve had, we can be sure that the best sailor will win the week.”

The SAP 5O5 World Championship takes place in Aarhus, Denmark, from 30 July to 5 August. This regatta is the latest in a series of major sailing championships hosted by the City of Aarhus over the past 10 years, with the Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds having taken place here in 2008 and with a number of major championships scheduled in the near future, including the A-Class Catamaran Worlds in 2011.

The 2010 SAP 5O5 World Championship is organised by Sailing Aarhus in cooperation with Sport Event Denmark, Sport Aarhus Event and the Danish Sailing Association. With a strong focus on innovation and new technology to promote sailing to a wider audience, Denmark and the City of Aarhus are bidding for the ISAF Worlds 2014, the most prestigious regatta next to the Olympic Games.