From a record sized fleet Paprec make best start to lead in Valencia

Jean-Luc Petithuguenin’s French team on Paprec lead the 52 SUPER SERIES Valencia Sailing Week after two good races in light to moderate breezes and perfect flat water competing on the America’s Cup waters off Malvarrosa Beach.

With Loick Peyron calling tactics and Yoann Richomme as navigator, Paprec paired a second and third in the biggest, toughest fleet of the season, a record 16 boats from 11 different nations making for a very busy, congested race course at times, especially at some of the mark roundings.

As might be expected in this big fleet of very evenly matched TP52s, sailing clean and minimising the mistakes was vital. That said, ironically Paprec made two modest starts – including being over the line at the gun on the second contest – but both times Peyron and the Paprec afterguard picked the favourable side of the course, and the French team visibly had good speed in the moderate airs.

Whilst the French crew are in the thick of a tough battle for the third step on the podium on the season championship, fighting Andrea Lacorte’s Alkedo Cetilar, with Joakim Sundberg’s Swedish flagged Trinity Racing and Pieter Heerema’s No Way Back all in the mix, the battle for the top spot see-sawed between Platoon Aviation and Sled.

For all their exciting ups and downs over the day, Harm Müller-Spreer’s season leaders Platoon Aviation conceded two points to Sled and the German flagged now lead the season standings by nine rather than 11 points.

As if to highlight how hard it was to return a high level of consistency today, Ed Baird guided Joakim Sundberg’s Trinity Racing to an impressive win in the first race, starting well along with Tony Langley’s Gladiator at the signal boat, but took a 14th place in the second heat. Gladiator went 3,13 for the day while the winners of the second race, Andrea Lacorte’s Alkedo Cetilar had started their Valencia regatta with a tenth after being over the start line at the gun.

Paprec’s Stéphane Névé was pleased with their opening day, “We could not expect something this good for the beginning of this event in Valencia.. We are very happy with the result, happy to be leading. We had two bad starts but we could recover from of them, so that’s pretty good. I think we had a good speed and also Yoann and Loick did a great job together and we really went where we wanted to go. We got to the good side each time.”

Platoon Aviation’s Victor Marino, explained, “We know that this event will be difficult, especially unstable winds and especially the 16 boats in the fleet all making everything more difficult. So sometimes you have good moments and sometimes not so good but we finish the day still in the fight.”

And Sled’s navigator Andrea Visintini recalled, “The forecasts were all over the place this morning, so we really didn’t know what to expect. The models weren’t agreeing. But then we had a really beautiful day sailing. The breeze came in, super challenging, of course for us, every race really is really, really important for the championship. And I think we had a couple of good races. There were big shifts, and so it was difficult just to commit to one side. We tried to play more in the middle, and we got two fifth places, which are pretty good for us.”

John Huhn’s American team Katana made a promising debut on the circuit today with a pair of ninth places to lie 11th.
52 SUPER SERIES Valencia Sailing Week Standings after two races.