European Championships

Tomorrow (May 17th) is the first day of racing for the European Championships. The team has been training hard, and is taking today off to rest and recover so we are full energy going into the event.

Training blocks 2 and 3 were extremely beneficial for the squad, and for myself personally. Almost every day, team USA did practice races with a number of other teams (France, Britain, Japan, Israel, Denmark, Japan, etc). Most days, there were between 40-60 boards on the start line. This was excellent for me to practice, as I have never experienced the quantity, nor the skill level of a fleet that large on the IQFoil.

The first day of practice racing was a steep learning curve. The starts were challenging, and I did not have a single good start the whole day. I would manage to crawl through the fleet to top half, but knew my focus in the coming days had to be on getting off the line clean.

All the next days of racing, I was more aggressive on the start line which reaped huge reward. I was getting off the line clean 4 out of 5 starts, and this would typically result in a top 10 finish. Some particularly noteworthy results in practice were a 4, 7, and two 8s out of approximately 50 boards. All of these good results had the commonality of a strong start.

I know what I need to do going into the regatta; get off the line clean, and play it from there. Being my first international IQ event, my primary goals are to not break my equipment, not injure myself, and get off the line clean. I am not here to set the world on fire, but to learn and absorb as much information as I can for future events.

All the best

Noah Lyons

USA 6