Open Russian: amazing racing with 73 boats fleet. Michele Paoletti takes the Gold of Open Russian.

The 5^th international regatta Open Russian – Open Championship of Russian Finn Association took place in Moscow from September, 3^rd till September 8^th. As usually this regatta has collected big number of sailors (more than 70) from 5 nations (Italia, Ukraine, Russia, Litvaniya and Byelorussia) and from different areas of Russia. Italia and Ukraine brought really strong teams this time. Fantastica Sailing Team has organized visit of top 6 Italian olympian finnesters headed by Michele Paoletti, Giorgio Poggi and Filippo Baldasari, strong masters team, including president of Italian Finn Association Franchesco Faggiani and former president of the Italian Finn Association Marco Buglielly, and talented juniors Umberto de Luca and young Rikardo Bevilakva. Ukraine Association brought strong masters team but headed by Olympian sailor Andrey Gusenko.  As for Russian sailors, while Eduard Skornyakov, Egor Terpigorev and Alexey Selivanov went to Santander for test event, the other strong sailors Arkadiy Kistanov (best among Russian at FGC2013), Dmitriy Petrov, and Byelorusian sailor Konstantin Lashuk, who is targeting to be transferred to Russian team, stayed in Moscow to fight for Open Russian trophy and for Balashov Cup trophy.

The opening ceremony was supported by Russian Yachting Federation and by Russian Students Sports Union (The Open Russian includes the Russian Students Sport Union championship for sailing sport). Oleg Matytsin, President of Russian Students Sport Union and vice-president of the International Federation of University Sports (FISU) has noted very high level of organization and high enthusiasm of finn sailors in the organization of such big event. He promised full support in promotion of the sailing sport inside of the University Sports Federation.

The regatta was very lucky for wind, while not for the total weather. The temperature of 10 degrees Centigram and strong rains during first 3 days were compensated by strong (up to 20 knots) and shifty wind.  

The racing committee has managed to carry out 9 good races during first 3 days. Italian sailor Mikele Paoletti has demonstrated perfect tactic capabilities and took absolute leadership in such tricky conditions. The second and third positions were occupied by Giorgio Poggi and Konstantin Lashuk with equal point.  

The 4^th day has presented good sunny weather for sailors and organizers but with less wind at the same time. Another 2 difficult and tricky races have changed the ranking a little bit: top three positions became occupied by Italians (Mikele Paoletti, Giorgio Poggi, Filippo Baldasari), while Arkadiy Kistanov became 4^th (2 points behind Baldasari ),  Konstantin Lashuk – 5^th.

The medal race was very easy for the leader Mikele Paoletti, but quite difficult for Russian, Ukranian and Byelorussian sailors since 6 Italian appeared among top ten. Arkadiy Kistanov was pushed out from the good starting position at the very beginning of the race, but he managed to pass Filippo Baldasari just before the finish of the medal race to become third overall. Giorgio Poggi won the medal race, so he defended his second position.

The final ranking of top ten is:

Top 3 juniors:

1.      Kistanov Arkadiy, RUS

2.      Umberto De Luca, ITA

3.      Bevilacqua Riccardo, ITA

Top 3 students:

1.      Kistanov Arkadiy, RUS

2.      Umberto De Luca, ITA

3.      Filippov Victor, RUS

Top 3 masters:

1.      Dmitriy Tereshkin, RUS

2.      Dmitry Petrov, RUS

3.      Vasiliy Kravchenko, RUS

Top 3 Grand-Masters:  

1.      Marco Bugielli, ITA

2.      Alexander Kasatov, RUS

3.      Michail Petriga, RUS

Grand-Grand-Masters:

1.      Yuri Polovinkin, RUS

Legend:

1.      Victor Kozlov, RUS

2.      Valentin Danilov, RUS

Victor Filippov took the special trophy for 11-th place in the overall ranking

Official results: /default.aspx?mode=binary&id=280

Open Championship of Russian Sports Students Union: /default.aspx?mode=binary&id=278

The Open Russian regatta was also a final stage of Andrey Balashov Cup (it includes 19 regattas, which are carried out in Russia in Finn class, 140 participants). Konstantun Lashuk has won the trophy of Andrey Balashov Cup.  

full results of Balashov Cup /regatta2013/regata_3278_76.aspx?view=results

During the regatta the sailors came to welcome dinner of Fantastica Sailing Team, where all the sailors had chance to communicate more closely, Italian, Ukraine an Russian Finn associations exchanged by their experiences and future plans.

The regatta finished by amazing  prize given ceremony with concert, were all participants were awarded by unique prizes in good friendly atmosphere.

Mikele Paoletti said: We have had very good interesting races with different wind conditions and shifts. It is nice to have such big strong fleet here. In spite of most of Italians have appeared in the top of ranking, the Russian sailors have shown very good class and they have good future. The place itself is very interesting. The logistic is very easy and quite cheap. I will advise all my friends to come to Open Russian next time.

Franchesco Faggiani, president of Italian Finn Association, said: That is very good and interesting experience for us. We have had very good experience of joint training camps and regattas together with Russian sailors in Italy in the frame of Fantastica Finn Academy. Russian sailors participated actively in our masters and Coppa Italia regattas and shown good class, as well as support of Fantastica Sailing Team helped us to come to Moscow. I think that this experience is very important for our sailors. Moscow has very good and cheap logistics for participating in the regatta Open Russian while Moscow has interesting sailing conditions and big charter fleet.

Andrey Gusenko, the leader of Ukranian team, said:

The regatta was organized at very good level, it attracts many interesting sailors and opens good initiatives like promotion of the sailing sport and Finn class among students level. Our Finn class is growing following to the example of our Russian friends, and we have had very good and interesting Ukraine Finn Association championship this year with 20 boats in the fleet. We are happy to participate in the regatta. Thanks to our Russian friends for their hospitality and constantly high professional level of regatta organization. We think that it is important to extend this experience over Eastern Europe, and it is high time to organize CIS championship or Eastern Europe Finn championship. We do want our Russian friends to come to Ukraine (Sevastopol and Odessa) to participate in our events. As good step towards this direction we can consider the idea of CIS Finn-masters championship, which is intended by Russian and Ukrainian Finn Associations to be held in Sevastopol from 10^th to 12-th of October, 2014.  

Foto from the medal race by Alexey Zhirov

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Foto report by Larisa Larionova.

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Foto report by Mariya Abashkina

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Video from the medal race and awarding ceremony - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziAGE5wMOaM&feature=c4-overview&list=UU5zSM7BuBm9hPu0LBTtKxbg

Official web-site of the regatta www.open-russian.ru