After a blustery opening day, Tuesday’s 10 to 12-knot sea breeze provided a gentler—but no less tactical—test for the nearly 800 sailors competing across ten Olympic disciplines. The regatta, a key early-season fixture on the international calendar, marks the first major multi-class event of the new Olympic cycle toward Los Angeles 2028.
Britain’s Emma Wilson, France’s Nico Goyard, and Singapore’s Max Maeder each posted multiple wins in their respective boardsailing classes. But in the skiff fleet, the day’s most notable performance came from a newly formed German team: Richard Schultheis and Fabian Rieger, who now lead the 91-boat 49er fleet.
Schultheis, just 19 years old, has sailed under the Maltese flag for most of his youth career but recently returned to sail for Germany, the country of his birth. He brings with him a decorated CV that includes top finishes in the Optimist, 29er, and most recently, the International Moth.
Rieger, who previously raced with Tim Fischer, saw something in the young sailor. “I had seen Richard racing before in the junior fleets and saw the potential and so said to him ‘What about it?’ and here we are,” he said. “I was hyped about this, looking for the right guy, and saw the potential and said ‘let’s go and fight for a medal in 2028.’ And so it started.”
After opening with a 3 and a 2 on Monday, the duo added a race win and a sixth-place finish on Tuesday, pulling them level on points with Poland’s Dominik Buksak and Adam Glogowski, who placed fifth at Paris 2024.
“The results are up and down—we are in our early stages as a team,” Schultheis said. “The communication and the starts, and how we manage everything. For now it is good to see we can keep up with everyone for speed, racing and results.”
He added: “I think the class has been coming here for so long now there is a lot of knowledge in the class about this race course and we can get ideas from the past and keep going from there. But for us it is important to win quality events, to be able to say ‘we won a Grand Slam’ or a ‘World Championship’. There are a lot of boats around us here you have to take care of. But you need to keep it simple and sail your own race and keep it clean in terms of other boats.”
Rieger, who has competed in the class since 2013, knows the path forward will take time. “As a new team there is so much for us to learn,” he said. “I have more experience in the boat but Richard is such a talent and is so motivated and we just need to keep going and put in the hours on the water. But there is so much talent in this fleet and the professionalism is going up and up, maybe right now we don’t have a Pete Burling who is always at the top but there are so many good guys in the fleet.”
He concluded: “Seeing where we stand we see the potential but everyone is just getting warmed up so we need to push hard together.”
In the 49erFX, lesser-known Italian duo Sofia Giunchiglia and Giulia Schio had a standout day, posting a 1, 3, and 2 to take the lead by one point over China’s Shasha Chen and Mengting Wang. Great Britain’s Freya Black and Saskia Tidey dropped to third.
Elsewhere, Diogo Costa and Carolina João of Portugal lead the 470 Mixed fleet on tie-break from Britain’s Martin Wrigley and Bettina Harris.
“It was on the limit for pumping today and so we suffered a little on the upwind but we were fast downwind and always gained places on the reaches and downwind,” said Costa. “We were happy with our Olympics and so wanted to hold on to our momentum, I think we were the first of the 470 sailors who were at the Olympics to start again and so we have pushed through a lot in the winter. We have hardly stopped. We were in Vilamoura and Lanzarote just wanting to arrive here strong. We have never started a whole cycle strong and aiming to hold the momentum to LA.”
In the board classes, Emma Wilson and Max Maeder each posted six wins from eight races. France’s Nico Goyard, a former World Champion, also returned to form after a disappointing finish in Paris, scoring four straight wins on Tuesday in the iQFOiL.
