Persico 69F Cup: waves, wind and the art of look up

Malcesine, September 17th,  2020 - Strong and gusty wind from north, a Lake Garda with chop waves, six boats and six teams ready to work with these conditions flying at over 30 knots: this is the first day of ITAS Assicurazioni Grand Prix 2.1 of Persico 69F CUP which in Malcesine, during the Foiling Week, has given hard and extremely fun races.

In first provisional place on the board, after four races - three of which with stronger wind and the last one in displacement mode - are the athletes Kingdom Team Netherlands. The young Dutch guys, who have the most hours of training with Persico 69F, have used the experience gained during more than 40 days of “flying” and they focused on the waves, staying as much as possible on the foils. All of this got them two third and two first places, two great electronic points and the point for the maximum speed during the race as well. In short, a great job.

The second provisional place goes to Fantastica 2: Nicola Celon had promised that after the experience in Grand Prix 1.1, raced with the Swiss flag, he would come back. He did it perfectly, putting on water Team Fantastica made by Lanfranco Cirillo and two hulls, one given to him (with Simone Salvà e Lorenzo Franceschini) and the other to Michele Paoletti (with Francesco Gabbi e Pietro de Luca). “On this boat - says Celon - you always have fun, even if you win like I did today in the first race, but even if you arrive in the back. The challenge today was to look up, literally: keeping the boat stable and controlling it looking up to choose where to go. We did good for a great part of the race, despite the penalty we got at the beginning for a naivety mistake, but the final result so far is positive”. 

The board has in third place Michele Paoletti on Fantastica 1 then the guys of RHKYC Team Agiplast, with mixed performances, and the Swiss teams, Okalys and Section 16. 

“Do not be deceived by the first day board - says Dede De Luca, Chief Sailing Officer - because the conditions were very hard to manage today and there are some teams whose improvement in training is very fast”, referring particularly to the Swiss team Section16 who provisionally is closing the board but, with only four days of active training, already shows an amazing tactic: it will take very little time to tame the boat and propose other goals. 

Tomorrow is the second day of races.