On the third day of the European Soling Championship at the Müggelsee in Berlin the conditions again made two scheduled races possible.
The sun was shining and after a twenty minutes wait there was 10 knots wind from 220°. At 11:21 am the first race of the day started. Just seconds before the boat of helm Rudy de Outer from the Netherlands crossed the starting line. The false start was not corrected and NED 33 was disqualified. That and a twelfth rank in the second race changed their seventh overall position from yesterday to a tenth.
The leading boat GER 333 (Schümann and crew), HUN 11 (Hungarian World Champions Litkey and crew) and defending champion GER 323 (Steingroß and crew) passed the last mark in that order. With the intention of surpassing their competitors Steingroß and crew chose a risky course. The effort failed and GER 323 ended the race with their discard position. Crew Hendrik Witzmann, Markus Koy and Knut Seelig benefited from that and came in third behind Schümann and the Hungarians.
The following second race showed the same results as the overall ranking considering position one and two. Jochen Schümann and crew came in first and Farkas Litkey and crew came in second. Witzmann, Koy and Seelig’s third place demonstrated that the three are now coping better and better.
After six races there is one discarded result which means a confident lead for Jochen Schümann, Thomas Flach and Ingo Borkowski with five first positions. On rank two with four second places and one third position are Hungarian world champions Litkey, Vezer and Oroszian. Ukrainian boat UKR 1 (Igor Yushko, Sergey Pichugin and Igor Severianov) has for now taken the bronze rank from defending champions Uwe Steingroß and team.
With three races to go there is every indication that Jochen Schümann may in fact win his ninth European Championship title after fifteen years of being inactive in the Soling class.
Klaus Müller / Wiebke Lechler
