The semifinalists in the 2010 EUROSAF European Match Race Championship were decided today. Four skippers from the Women division and four from the Open division have their berth for the semis guaranteed. Conditions were moderate to light, decreasing as the day progressed and as a result, the race committee was forced to stop the last two races (Bekatorou against Macgregor and Monnin against Arbuzov) earlier, in favor of carrying out the full schedule of semifinal and final races on Saturday.

Women

Cristiana Monina from Italy beat Dutch Renee Groeneveld three nil and advanced to the semifinals. The score doesn’t reflect the tight and close matches they had to sail. As Monina stated, it was a very stressing and tiring day as the crews had to make a very difficult choice on where to go. Under these light conditions, it was almost impossible sniffing where that little extra puff would come from, and for her, the key was to have a clean start, be ahead and cover her opponent until the finish line.

For Lotte Meldgaard from Denmark it was a little bit easier as she had better boat speed upwind in all three races. Rita Gonçalves, her Portuguese opponent was able to make some gains downwind, but not enough to pass.

The day’s most exciting quarterfinal was by far the one between Russia’s Ekaterina Skudina and Silke Hahlbrock from Germany. The German started well and won the first two races. At that point it seemed it was over but the Russians didn’t give up. They knew they had to sail flawlessly and so they did. With the dying breeze Skudina used her skills gained from Moscow’s lakes and tied two all.

The decisive match was a real rollercoaster. Hahlbrock forced a penalty on Skudina in the dialup, something "not clever at all" as Skudina admitted, but despite the advantage she went on to pile up on crew errors. A sloppy spinnaker drop at the bottom mark gave Skudina a 26-second advantage that she used in order to offload the penalty at the last top mark. She kept in front of the German and won her ticket to the semifinals.

The last quarterfinal of the day, and longest one as the breeze was dropping, saw Britain’s Lucy Macgregor beat Sofia Bekatorou from Greece 2-1. In the first race Macgregor got the upper hand during the prestart, got ahead of her opponent and covered her until the finish line. In the second race the two skippers had a pretty even start but Bekatorou found just a little bit more breeze and was able to be ahead at the first cross, staying in front until the end. In the third and final race Macgregor showed her skills once again at the prestart, squeezing her opponent at the committee boat and forcing her to a windward-leeward incident. Judging she had gained advantage, the umpires red flagged Bekatorou. Facing an opponent with the pedigree of Macgregor, there was little the Greek could do.

2010 EUROSAF European Match Race Championship - Quarterfinals – Provisional Results

Women :

Meldgaard (DEN) defeats Gonçalves (POR) 3-0
Monina (ITA) defeats Groneveld (NED) 3-0
Skudina (RUS) defeats Hahlbrock (GER) 3-2
Macgregor (GBR) defeats Bekatorou (GRE) 2-1 (Race committee stopped race at that stage)