Today's Sailing News 

Note:  Today is one year since SD # 1. For those new to SD all 206 issues are archived in the 1999 & 2000 archives.

We have also instituted a few subtle design changes we hope are an improvement.  As always I welcome your comments via e-mail.

Ike Stephenson

Olympic Class Rankings

49er 1st: Baur/Barth Germany.  USA Nominated Olympic Team:  Jonathan/Charlie Mckee 9th -2 slots.

Laser 1st: Ben Ainslie Great Britain.  USA Olympic Nominated sailor: John Myrdal 67th, -3 positions.

470 Men's Gildas and Cariou of France remain 1st.  US Olympians Paul Foerester and Bob Merrick are 5th, up 3 spots.

470 Women's Ukraine's Taran and Pakholchuyk remain 1st.  US Olympians J.J. Isler and Pease Glaser are up 9 spots to 18th.

Soling Ukraine is also ranked 1st in this class.  With the USA's Olympic trials beginning this week the top ranked team is Madrigal/Healey and Jordan.  They are 8th, an improvement of 13 spots.

Mistral Men's Aussie Lars Kleppich remains 1st.  The USA's Olympian Mike Gebhardt is 28th.

Mistral Women's US Olympian Lanee Butler is 24th.  France's Faustine Merret is the top ranked women's board sailor.

Finn  Poland's Mateusz Kusznierewicz is the top ranked Finn man.  The USA's Russ Silvestri is 41st.  Silvestri will try to gain an Olympic spot at the Finn Gold Cup starting 6 June.

Europe Great Britain's Shirley Robertson is 1st. Courtenay Becker-Dey is the lowest ranked US trials winner at 79th.

Star The German team of Hoesch and Fendt are 1st followed by the winners of the recent Class world championship Americans Reynolds and Liljerdahl.

Tornado This class is also led by a German team: Gaebler and Schwall.  American Olympians Lovell and Ogletree are 11th.

With the Olympic regatta 3 months away USA Olympians are ranked best in the 2 person dinghy classes and the keelboats.

Two significant regattas upcoming are the Soling Selection trials which will give us the final members of the Olympic team and the Finn Gold Cup.  This regatta will determine whether USA Olympic trials winner Russ Silvestri will qualify to sail the Olympic regatta.  Sailing Daily will cover both of these.

'STAR' Transat Records by Class

The 2000 Europe1 New Man Star 2000 will have 78 entries.  62 will be monohulls, 15 trimarans along with a solitary catamaran.

The Europe 1 breaks classes by length: Class 1 for 60 footers, Class II for 45-50 footers, Class III for 40-45 footers, Class IV for 35-40 footers and Class V for 30-35 footers.

For each of these classes mono and multi hull there is a class record to break.  

For the multi hulls here are the respective class records:

Class I Poupon 1988 10 days 9 hours 15 minutes (also overall race reference time)

Class II Clerris 1992 16 days 12 hours 17 minutes

Class III Moussey 1984 16 days 18 hours 56 minutes

Class IV Giorie 1992 16 days 6 hours 45 minutes

Class V Thompson 1988 18 days 6 hours 0 minutes.

Class 1 Parlier 1992 14 days 16 hours 1 minute

Class II Soldini 1996 15 days 18 hours 29 minutes

Class III Brutger 19 days 14 hours 22 minutes

Class IV Van Hagen 1992 19 hours 11 hours 19 minutes

Class V Falk 1996 19 days 22 hours 57 minutes

Tomorrow we will analyze the expected conditions for the start and the early stages of the race to see if the weather looks to be favorable for new records.