IQFoil Europeans 2020: Day 4 Results

First IQFoil Europeans Championship is being held at Silvaplana, same venue as past week Formula FOil Worlds. All images by Sailing Energy / Engadinwind – Live replay here

Update: Wednesday Finals Live stream here

What a great start the new IQFoil Olympic Class had. First stage was done in Slalom format where Mateo Iachino & Sebastien Koerdel dominated with their PWS Slalom extensive skills. Second stage was held today with 4 Windward-Leeward courses where course Racing master Nico Goyard prevailed.

Mateo and Sebastien also had good performance today on the Windward-Leeward courses and the sum up of the combined formats has result in a super close race with Nico Goyard leading by 1pt over Iachino and Koerdel one behind the Italian rider.

This great balance was possible to the wise format envisioned by Gonzalo Costa Hoevel and the IQFoil Class, as now several sailors biotypes are awarded, something which is almost impossible to achieve in One Design Classes. In contrary to common belief, dinghies OD Classes do not always offer leveled fields for every kind of sailor as they mostly target specific weights / heights, narrowing gratly who can be competitive or not. Examples are many like Finn, previous Windsurf RSX & Mistral Classes, Star etc.

Windsurfing suffers even more the biotype restrictions imposed by OD Classes as body weight its more critical for a windsurfer. One of the best ways to counter act those weight difference is given by the International Windsurfing Formula Class and its Formula Foil division where a 91kg sailor can use a 10mt sail vs a 75-80kg sailor racing a 9mt one. Same with boards volume.

To compensate these differences as mentioned above the IQfoil has established the Slalom format below 10knots of winds. Above that range Course racing can be scheduled.

In short, to reign in the new IQFoil Class you will need to be a quite versatile sailor and there the PWA Professionals will have an initial gap over the rest of the Olympic background sailors form the RSX Course Racing arena.

An additional great aspect of the Formula Foil Class working aspect was how today Nico Goyard won two of the IQFoil One Design (All Starboards 95cm/196lts and 9mt Severne sails) course races with same flare and gap as some of the races of last week Formula Foil Worlds. The best sailors always win in the end, I have yet to be aware of any Formula or Box Rule Class where a mediocre sailor has won a World Title only on equipment itself.

Tracking Tracking at https://www.tractrac.com/event-page/event_20200817_Engadinwin/1927

IQFoil Europeans 2020 Top ten below, complete results at official web https://europeans2020.iqfoil.org/ Results menu tab.