The iQFOiL World Championship in Aarhus saw an exciting comeback of action on the water on the third day of competition. After a frustrating Monday with a lull, the athletes were finally able to start racing again on Tuesday. The light morning wind freshened to 8 to 14 knots as the day progressed and offered more consistent, albeit still shifty, conditions compared to the opening day.
New format creates excitement
The race day began with the new upwind sprint format - short, intense races over seven minutes with an upwind start, a reach section and a final downwind leg. The women completed five of these sprint races, while the men switched to the classic course race format after three sprints. Finally, the men's blue group made up for the third course race that was cancelled on the first day, while the yellow group stayed on land.
It remains extremely close at the top of the men's standings. Frenchman Tom Arnoux is now in the lead with 15 points, closely followed by Kiran Badloe. In third place is the 2021 French world champion Nicolas Goyard. Reigning world champion Nicolò Renna is currently in fourth place, just 0.3 points ahead of 2024 Olympic bronze medallist Luuc van Opzeeland.
Theresa Steinlein very solid in the new format
In the women's event, the reigning world champion and Olympic silver medallist from Paris 2024, Sharon Kantor, put in an impressive performance. With five wins in five races, she clearly took the lead in the field. She now leads by a comfortable margin of 13 points. In second place is Theresa Steinlein, who climbed up the rankings with consistently strong results, including two victories in her race group. Israel's Tamar Steinberg completes the podium in third place.
The new race format is fun, it's exciting and you have to make decisions at lightning speed." (Theresa Steinlein)
Steinlein was very happy at the end of the day: "I'm pretty happy with my day. I took two wins and I really enjoyed the new race format. It's super exciting because everything happens so quickly. You have to make decisions at lightning speed and have no time to hesitate. I'm very happy with how things went and I'm looking forward to tomorrow."
Sophia Meyer is in 49th place, having made it into the top ten in her group once. Alica Stuhlemmer is 74th, Max Körner has slipped down to 64th place among the German men, Lenny Friemel has moved up to 58th place and Fabian Wolf is currently 67th.
From today, both fleets will be divided into gold and silver groups, with the top half of the ranking moving into the gold fleet. Due to the forecast, the first start is not scheduled until 2pm. All subsequent races will be broadcast live on the YouTube and Facebook channels of the class broadcast in livestream. The broadcast starts at 2 pm.
