CAMERON APPLETON AND TEAM AQUA ON POLE POSITION FOR THE MALCESINE RC44 CUP
[RC44 Championship Tour Press Release] Fifteen knots of wind, great sunshine and flat water: those are the conditions that the ten teams involved in the Malcesine RC44 Cup hope to get this week. Lake Garda is situated about 65 metres above sea level between the Alps and the Po plain; it is the largest lake in Italy. The northern part of the lake is surrounded by mountainous peaks that create a funnel effect and generate the local winds – the Ora between midday and the early hours of the evening and the Vento between midnight and mid-morning.
Organised by Fraglia Vela di Malcesine, the regatta begins tomorrow with the match racing event. Winner of the last regatta and leader of the Championship Tour, Chris Bake’s Team Aqua with Cameron Appleton at the helm is one of the favourites of the series, alongside Torbjorn Tornqvist/Dean Baker’s Artemis and Larry Ellison/Russell Coutts’ BMW Oracle Racing, who won the match race event in Malcesine last year. Also to be reckoned with, Maciej Nawrocki and Karol Jablonski’s team Organika, second of the match race event in Austria last month and Igor Lah/Sébastien Col’s Ceeref.
The fleet regatta will take place from Friday 10 till Sunday 12. The long distance regatta – the DHL Trophy – will count for double; it will most probably take place on Saturday.
The ten RC44’s have been training hard over the past days. This morning, Frank Pong’s Team Jelik, who join the Class for the first time, had a first “lake trial” with 20+ knots of wind. “Now I understand why everybody says that Lake Garda is such a fantastic place for sailing”, said Pong. “It was absolutely awesome.”
The RC44 Class’ Official logistic supplier DHL announced this morning that it can provide first results based on its extensive climate protection program. To date, it has been possible to compensate around 16 tons of CO2 whilst transporting the yachts between the various sailing spots. Approximately 36 tons of CO2 will be offset during the entire season. The RC 44 Championship Tour’s co-operation with DHL, the leading logistics
specialist, thus now also continues the environmentally friendliness of sailing on land.
DHL is organizing the transport of the yachts and other sailing regatta equipment thus enabling a closely packed regatta series on various continents.
As part of its carbon management system, the global market leader for transport services ensures that CO2 emissions during transport are reduced as much as possible and that all unavoidable greenhouse gas burdens will be offset through investments in internationally acknowledged climate protection initiatives.
Malcesine RC44 Cup, entry list
Team Aqua, Chris Bake / Cameron Appleton
Team Ceeref, Igor Lah / Sébastien Col
Sea Dubai, Yousef Lahej, DIMC / Markus Wieser
BMW Oracle Racing, Larry Ellison / Russell Coutts
Team Organika, Maciej Nawrocki / Karol Jablonski
Puerto Calero Islas Canarias, Daniel Calero / Jose Maria Ponce
Artemis, Torbjorn Tornqvist / Dean Barker
No Way Back, Pieter Heerema / Ray Davies
Team Austria, René Mangold / Christian Binder
Team Jelik, Frank Pong / Adam Minoprio
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