OVERALL LEADER POULIGNY OCS IN RACE 6 AT MELGES 24 EUROPEANS

Race six at the Melges 24 Europeans saw major upsets with Cedric Pouligny and Favio Favini caught OCS.

After a six and a half-hour postponement sailing finally got underway at 5.30pm. Keen to ensure the fleet got away rapidly the race committee introduced the black flag catching out both overnight leader Pouligny and fourth placed Favini. Pouligny is protesting his disqualification so final results hang on the outcome of this hearing.

With the early evening breeze shifting constantly there were significant place changes through out the race. Overall second place Laurent Pages got a lousy start and went the wrong way up the first beat coming out 24th at the top mark. Unfortunately his day did not improve and by the finish he had dropped right back into the low 40s.

Of the overnight leaders only Jamie Lea, Andrea Rachelli and Alba Batzill made the top ten in second, third and eighth respectively. Kristoffer Spone took first place improving his overall result from 14th to 10th. With the discard coming into play after six races the leader board remains fairly constant with Pouligny first overall ahead of Pages and Batzill. Favini's OCS drops him down from 4th to 6th in a direct place swap with Rachelli. Lea continues to fill the gap between them in 5th place.

In a desperate bid to out manoeuvre the unusual weather conditions being experienced in Torbole this week the race committee have announced that they plan to start racing at 0800 tomorrow morning.

Full results and further details are available from www.melges24.com or e-mail FionaBrown@compuserve.com

Provisional Overall Results (Subject to Protest).
1 FRA-383 CEDRIC POULIGNY (3,5,5,1,6,OCS) 37.4
2 FRA-388 LAURENT PAGES (15,1,3,10,1,47) 42.7
3 GER-507 ALBA BATZILL (2,21,2,5,8,8) 44
4 ITA-438 ANDREA RACCHELLI (19,3,18,9,4,3) 58.4
5 GBR-437 JAMIE LEA (14,9,15,4,7,2) 59
6 SUI-483 FLAVIO FAVINI (5,4,24,2,10,OCS) 67
7 ITA-490 SILVIO SANTONI (9,2,53,24,2,12) 69
8 ITA-139 MARIO ZILLIANI (10,8,1,15,DNF,7) 72
9 NOR-418 HERMAN HORN JOHANNESSEN (OCS,25,13,11,5,4) 85
10 NOR-249 KRISTOFFER SPONE (29,13,10,20,25,1) 92