After not competing this Thursday, the Spanish Pilar Lamadrid has proven that she dominates the Lanzarote race course and is unstoppable, achieving 3 victories in the 5 races held, so she continues to lead the women's category and qualifies directly for the grand final this Saturday, in which she will compete in the medal races. “Today we had a long but very productive day, although in one of the rounds I came in third because I had a fall when I took the buoy badly,” declared the Spanish sailor, who despite winning the slaloms, has had bad luck during the marathon, since despite leading practically all the time, in the final a small mistake gave the lead to the British Emma Wilson. “I am very happy to go straight to the grand final tomorrow, but I am not so calm either because I can really lose everything I have achieved this week, although at worst I could be third,” commented Lamadrid. According to her main rival, “tomorrow everything restarts, although I am already happy, so it will be fun,” said Wilson.
With ideal conditions in Lanzarote as usual, with winds between 12 and 17 knots, both men and women have been able to compete in the 3 different formats that can be done in this class, specifically 2 upwind-downwind legs (races), the marathon that scores double (long distance) and 2 more slalom legs (zigzag). “Today was a perfect day, they competed in 2 upwind-downwind legs in the morning, then we did long distance (about 30-40 minutes) which scores double, we toured the entire bay to Papagayo, and then in the afternoon we did slalom, since the wind dropped a bit,” explained Gonzalo Costa, secretary of this Olympic class of the International iQFoil Class Association. In his opinion, people are “very happy” and the forecasts for the grand final are very good, “tomorrow we will have the medal races in which the top 10 men and women will compete,” he added.
Regarding the men's category, there also seems to be a defined leadership: that of France. And it is that Nicolas Goyard has had an impeccable journey, achieving victory in practically all the races: he won 6 legs of the 9 held (race mode), came first in the marathon and achieved a first place in slalom. “I am very happy, they have been very intense but entertaining legs, in general we have enjoyed the day a lot and I am looking forward to seeing what happens in the grand final,” said Goyard. Closely followed by the Dutchman Luuc Van Opzeeland, who manages to recover from yesterday's day, and manages to win one of the two legs, takes the two slalom victories, and a second place in the marathon, after Goyard. In third place, Huig Jan Tak also stalks them, who, unlike his Dutch team partner, “had a tough day today”, especially at the start, so he has not obtained as good results as on Thursday.
