The 212 Olympic windsurfers who have gathered in Lanzarote for the 2024 iQFOiL World Championships will have to wait until Tuesday for the first races. There was insufficient wind on Day 1 and the opening races are now programmed for tomorrow, starting at 11:00 island time.
Lanzarote, January 29, 2024
The Race Committee actually spent many hours on the water, taking measurements and following the evolution of a capricious wind, which just never reached the minimum windspeed required to start the races. The start of this first World Championship of the year in Lanzarote is postponed to tomorrow, Tuesday.
The 94 women and 118 men all took to the water after 11:00 this morning. “In the early morning there were quite nice conditions for a slalom with a breeze of 7 to 8, sometimes nine knots, but unfortunately it died away just before the start of the countdown, so we didn’t race. The wind disappeared and that was it.” explained PRO Ewa Jodlowska.
The fleet returned to land and waited ashore for news while making use of the Marina Rubicón facilities.
Sebastian Koerdel was World Champion in 2022 and he is last year’s runner-up. His objective this week is clear: “I’m here trying to get back my title this year at six months before the Games and here in beautiful Lanzarote.”
The German won the place for his country in the last World Championships in The Hague and knows the island well: “I’ve spent a lot of time here. I came here two months ago for training and enjoyed it a lot.” However the selection for Germany is still open so there is some added pressure here.
Kiran Badloe, Olympic champion in Tokyo in the former Olympic windsurfing class RS:X, faces the same scenario. The Dutch team has many good windsurfers including the current World Champion Luuc van Opzeeland.
“It’s a tough one,” Badloe acknowledges. “We have a lot of good guys, it will be an intense week and hopefully we can prolong the battle until Palma, which is our final trials event.”
All the time on the water, the Committee continued trying. The wind increased periodically in strength but never quite reaching the minimum, before it finally fell again. At 4:00 p.m., Jodlowska announced the postponement of the day until tomorrow, Tuesday.
For tomorrow the start of the day has been brought forward to 11:00 island time. “The weather forecast for tomorrow is a bit better than for today so hopefully we will manage to have slaloms and then, for the next days, it’s much better to do course racing because the weather forecast looks good at the moment, but we never know” explains the PRO.
The Lanzarote International Regatta is organized by Marina Rubicón with the collaboration of the Royal Canarian Sailing Federation, as well as the institutional support of the Tourism area of the Lanzarote Cabildo through the sports product European Sports Destination (managed by SPEL-Turismo Lanzarote), Promotur Turismo de Canarias, the Yaiza City Council and the private entities Dinghycoach, Naviera Armas and Cabrera Medina (Cicar).
Text Credits: Helena Paz/Marina Rubicón
Photo Credits: Sailing Energy/Marina Rubicón
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