54th Trofeo Princesa Sofia Mallorca by FERGUS - Day 2
by Trofeo S.A.R. Princesa Sofía 1 Apr 20:09 BST
28 March - 5 April 2025
54th Trofeo Princesa Sofia Mallorca by FERGUS day 2 © Sailing Energy / Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca
After a brisk, breezy start to the 54 Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca by FERGUS Hotels on Monday which gave the Olympic sailing classes a test from the first start guns of the showcase Mallorcan regatta, today the athletes were afforded a couple of hours to regroup and find their marks before the renowned Bay of Palma sea breeze built on cue.
An afternoon of warm sunshine with 10-12k knots of thermal wind saw all seven course areas operating in champagne conditions, a reminder there is no better place in the world for early season Olympic racing on this scale.
Among the standout performers Britain's iQFOiL bronze medallist Emma Wilson, France's past World Champion and runner up here last year Nico Goyard and Singapore's Kite racer Max Maeder were posting multiple race wins to lead their respective divisions.
Featured class: 49er/49er FX Skiffs
After five qualifying races for the 49er skiffs it is the newly formed young German duo Richard Schultheis and Fabian Rieger who head the 91 strong fleet. The Sofia title is wide open with none of the Paris 2024 Olympic medal winners here.
At the tender age of 19 Schulteis already has a long list of honours moving through the Optimist, 29er and currently also the International Moth class until now racing for Malta where he has lived since he was five.
Most recently he finished fifth, top European in a star-studded International Moth World Championship in New Zealand which was won by Matthias Coutts. Now he has elected to sail for the country of his birth and teams up with Fabian Rieger -2021 world championship runner up crew and and past European champion - who returns to the front of the boat as crew after a spell helming.
They opened the regatta Monday with a promising 3,2 to which they add today's first and sixth to earn a share of the lead along with Poland's Dominik Buksak and Adam Glogowski who finished fifth at Paris 2024.
Rieger who sailed with Tim Fischer before, explains, "I had seen Richard racing before in the junior fleets and saw the potential and so said to him 'What about it?' and here we are....I was hyped about this, looking for the right guy, and saw the potential and said 'let's go and fight for a medal in 2028. And so it started."
Schultheis mirrors his crew's enthusiasm, "The results are up and down we are in our early stages as a team the communication and the starts, and how we manage everything. For now it is good to see we can keep up with everyone for speed, racing and results."
He adds, "I think the class has been coming here for so long now there is a lot of knowledge in the class about this race course and we can get ideas from the past and keep going from there. But for us it is important to win quality events, to be able to say 'we won a Grand Slam' or a 'World Championship'. There are a lot of boats around us here you have to take care of. But you need to keep it simple and sail your own race and keep it clean in terms of other boats."
Rieger who has been in the class since 2013 and has a Sofia best of seventh, highlights: "As a new team there is so much for us to learn. I have more experience in the boat but Richard is such a talent and is so motivated and we just need to keep going and put in the hours on the water. But there is so much talent in this fleet and the professionalism is going up and up, maybe right now we don't have a Pete Burling who is always at the top but there are so many good guys in the fleet."
Reiger concludes, "Seeing where we stand we see the potential but everyone is just getting warmed up so we need to push hard together."
As it is the very start of the new Olympic cycle many of the bigger nations have full squads competing here, Australia have seven duos, France seven, GBR eight and there are 11 pairs are from Germany.
French duo Lucas Rual, 29er World Champion in 2013, sailing with Emile Amoros led after Day 1 but dropped to eighth on the Qualifying leaderboard after a sixth and eighth today. Their compatriots, World Champions Erwan Fischer and Clément Péquin are up to sixth, their aggregate bolstered by a first and fifth today,
"The conditions were great today, we got a couple of 'keepers' and had a lot of fun. We had 10-12kts, real champagne sailing. Now we have such a solid squad now in France with Erwan and Clement the world champions, there are a lot of young guys pushing hard now, so no one's place is secure. It is great training. We were in Vilamoura for a lot of time and we have the 'Young Old' group as we all them and the 'Young Young' groups, and we consider ourselves just 'Old'" grins Amorros, "This our ninth Sofia, we have done a lot of eighth overalls and want to do better this time....and seventh won't be enough!"
Lesser-known names are making moves at the front of the women's 49erFX fleet. Italians Sofia Giunchiglia and Giulia Schio sailed a stellar day in the yellow qualifying fleet to notch up scores of 1,3,2. This is enough to put Italy in front by a single point ahead of another up-and-coming team, China's Shasha Chen and Mengting Wang. Dropping to third are Great Britain's Freya Black and Saskia Tidey.
Tuesday Round Up
In the 470 Mixed class Portugal's Diogo Costa and Carolina Joao are leaders at the end of the qualifying phase, delivering on their ambition to start the new Olympic cycle from a position of strength, pushing directly on since taking fifth in Marseille with very little downtime.
Helm Costa affirmed, "It was on the limit for pumping today and so we suffered a little on the upwind but we were fast downwind and always gained places on the reaches and downwind. We were happy with our Olympics and so wanted to hold on to our momentum, I think we were the first of the 470 sailors who were at the Olympics to start again and so we have pushed through a lot in the winter. We have hardly stopped. We were in Vilamoura and Lanzarote just wanting to arrive here strong. We have never started a whole cycle strong and aiming to hold the momentum to LA."
They share the same 5 points aggregate as GBR's Martin Wrigley and Bettina Harris.
In the ILCA 7 fleet Micky Beckett leads into the Finals phase also tied on points with Australia's Ethan Macauley whilst Belgium's Emma Plaeschart counts three wins in the ILCA 6. In the Formula Kite Men's fleet Singapore's Max Maeder continues to dominate counting six heat wins from eight starts, discarding a second and first whilst in the Women's division China's Si Wang retains the top spot.
Runner up here last year Nico Goyard of France, 2021 world champion who finished a disappointing 15th at Paris 2024, is pretty much matching Maeder's run with four consecutive victories today in the iQFOiL to now lead Australia's Olympic silver medallist Grae Morris. The Women's iQFOiL division sees Emma Wilson also knocking in successive heat wins in her typical style, also counting six victories from eight heats. China's Huangcheng Zha and Su Sha are still showing the value of a hrd winter of squad training holding the Nacra 17 lead.
The 54 Trofeo Princesa Sofía Mallorca by FERGUS Hotels is jointly organised by the Club Nàutic S'Arenal, the Club Marítimo San Antonio de la Playa, the Real Club Náutico de Palma, the Real Federación Española de Vela and the Federación Balear de Vela, with the support of World Sailing, and is co-financed by the Govern de les Illes Balears' Sustainable Tourism Tax fund.
Event website: www.trofeoprincesasofia.org