iQFOiL World Championship: Steinlein takes sensational bronze, Wilson and Brown win ahead of Aarhus

Dramatic women's final

The women's Grand Final featured the most intense races of the week. In the first race, Theresa Steinlein led from the start, while Emma Wilson crashed right at the start but was able to fight her way back to second place. Tamar Steinberg and Maya Gysler followed closely behind. In the second race, a premature start by the entire field of four caused additional drama. At the restart, Tamar Steinberg chose a different tactic to the rest and was able to leave Emma Wilson behind and secure victory. Now Wilson, who started the final as the leader of the preliminary rounds with a win, Steinlein and Steinberg each had a win. In the third final run, Emma Wilson held her nerve and confirmed her outstanding form from the heats. She decided to tack to the right side of the course early on and pulled out an unassailable lead. The Briton thus surfed to her first world championship title, followed by Maya Gysler in second place. In the overall standings, however, Tamar Steinberg took the silver medal and Theresa Steinlein bronze. After an impressive sixth place at last year's Olympic Games, this is the biggest success for Theresa and her coach Daniel Slijk - incidentally the brother of long-time surf magazine tester Nicolas Slijk.

British triumph in the men's competition

In the first men's Grand Final race, Tom Arnoux used an advantage on the right-hand side of the track to snatch victory from Andy Brown. In the second and decisive race, however, Andy Brown controlled the action from start to finish. With the victory, the Brit secured the world championship title. Nicolò Renna finished second in the race and third in the overall standings, while Tom Arnoux took third place in the race and silver in the overall standings.

Voices of the champions

An overjoyed Emma Wilson commented on her triumph: "It was a long day, we ended up doing three final races to decide the winner and in the end I won the last race by two seconds! I'm just happy, it doesn't feel real! I tried to stay cool all week, it wasn't easy, but I just kept believing in my training and I knew I was super fast, so I just rode fast and tried to get good tactics. I've never won a senior title before, so it's a childhood dream for me to be world champion!" Andy Brown was equally delighted: "It was exciting, that's for sure, it was really up and down, left and right, you need a bit of luck and luckily it went in my favour. Congratulations to Tom and Nicolò too, I'm really happy! This title means a lot to me, I've been working towards it for a long time, I've been a full-time windsurfer since 2017. I didn't know it would work out this year, but I was hoping it would happen at some point, so I'm super happy!"

Results:

Ladies:

1. Emma Wilson (GBR) -
2. Tamar Steinberg (ISR)
3. Theresa Steinlein (GER)

Gentlemen:

1. Andy Brown (GBR)
2. Tom Arnoux (FRA)
3. Nicolò Renna (ITA)

You can find all the results on the Event page of the World Championship
On the YoutTube page of World Sailing you can watch the live streams of the World Cup again.

Further articles on the iQFOiL World Championship in Aarhus can be found here:

• Calm before the storm
• Steinlein moves up to second place
• IQFOiL World Championships in Aarhus - Magetti and van Opzeeland in front at the start