“Black Star” wins the GC32 World Championship in the Portuguese waters of Lagos

In the second half of the world championship it was Christian Zuerrer’s “Black Star Sailing Team” that beat the French after the third of today’s four regattas. With outstanding consistency, the Swiss have finished on the podium in each of the last 10 races. This afternoon the world champions of the flying catamaran class were proclaimed for the fourth time after «Team Tilt», «Alinghi Red Bull Sailing Team».

“Black Star Sailing Team” only debuted on the GC32 Racing Tour in 2019, but trained to finish 2021 third overall. Impressively, this GC32 World Championship, the biggest event of the season, was his first win at a GC32 Racing Tour event.

“I am absolutely happy” Zuerrer said. “I want to thank my family, who have given me time to be away from home and… yes, we have achieved it, finally!

We managed to find the best breeze best of all teams. We started well and we had to keep the boat moving, that was the most important thing. Perhaps we were also lucky to always be on the right side of the pressure. It was unstable and they could have stopped the racing, but we always try to be in the leading position.”

The «Black Star» has the particularity that its owner is in charge of trimming the main, instead of taking the helm. New Zealand sailor Chris Steele is in charge of this. Also on board were Italian Pierluigi De Felice, New Zealander Stewart Dodson and Briton Will Alloway. Steele is famous for having won the Optimist World Cup in 2007. “This is up there!” he said of his ranking. “It’s great to be a part of this project. There are some amazing guys on the teams.” .

Regarding his performance, Steele added: “We’ve always been strong on the lane, so that worked in our favor. I have to give credit to the ‘K-Challenge’, which shot from the beginning, which surprised people, and was there until the end. They were very fast upwind, but we were fast upwind, but very fast downwind.”

“K-Challenge Team France” was leading this championship with a 10-point advantage on Friday, but his skipper, Quentin Delapierre, was happy in defeat: “We missed out on the title by a few points, but that’s racing and we just tried to play our game until the end.

The “Black Star” has competed very well and has improved throughout the week. They were very fast in light wind conditions, so I was happy to be able to match them, in such a short time, in terms of speed and sometimes in terms of handling the boat.”

After winning Sunday’s second test, the French made a rare seventh-place finish in third, putting them within three points of what would be the final test. In the last regatta, the French once again led the race until the gennaker sheet got stuck at the last mark. The Swiss team scored another goal in the standings.

Alinghi Red Bull Sailing Team took the bottom step of the podium, with 24-year-old Maxine Duchelin replacing Arnaud Psarofaghis at the helm. “Team Tilt” was fourth, the 2018 world champions enjoyed their best day so far, winning the first round of the last round of the championship by a huge margin and leading the second until they lost the last turn. Skipper Sébastien Schneiter said they were not prepared for the breezy conditions: “It has been a great event: complicated conditions, with incredible tests and those at the top have sailed very well.”

Team Rockwool Racing barely saw the strong conditions it expected and finished four points clear of sixth-placed Erik Maris’ Zoulou, once again in the lead.

“We didn’t think Lagos was going to be like this” said Maris. “We only had two strong wind races, so it was very open and with a high level from everyone. In the end we had a lot of fun and we sailed well.

Winning the Aramdores Championship is always good and we are happy with it, but what we were really looking for were the overall results. It was good that there were four boats from 10 owners and there should be more in this fleet: The boat is amazing, the fleet is very beautiful and the regattas are the best in the world.”

Jason Carroll’s ‘Argo’ showed promise but only managed to get on the podium in today’s final race, while the new Polish team, Piotr Harasimowicz’s ‘HRM Racing Team’ and, above all, ‘Team Canada’ by Graeme Sutherland had some good times today.

Delighted with his conclusion to the race was Simon Delzoppo and his “.film AUS Racing”, who led the last two races, managing to convert them in two seconds. “Today we got off the start line well. You need clean wind and today was about finding the breeze and staying in it. It was nice to be up there with the Black Star and not lose it.”

Wearing his GC32 class president cap, Delzoppo added: “It’s been an amazing race. It was good to see there wasn’t an obvious winner at the start. There were a lot of races that allowed the best to come out on top and we have a new winner: Black Star worked hard and kept getting better. They were very rapids on the water. It was a well-deserved victory.”

The GC32 Racing Tour now heads to its final event of the season in the Mar Menor, Spain, from October 19-23.