52 SUPER SERIES Saint-Tropez Cup Day 3
by 52 Super Series 3 May 06:35 NZST
29 April - 4 May 2025
52 SUPER SERIES Saint-Tropez Cup Day 3 © Nico Martinez / 52 Super Series
The standings remain the same at the 52 SUPER SERIES Saint-Tropez Sailing Week after a day with insufficient wind to race.
The 11 boat fleet of TP52s representing nine different nations waited on the water until 1700hrs before it clouded over and the light breeze which had shown some temporary promise dropped away again and Principal Race Officer Maria Torrijo had to send the fleet back to dock in the historic harbour of Saint Tropez.
One day of racing, Thursday, so far has produced two good races but hopes are high that Sunday will produce a suitable finale. A very slack pressure gradient over the entire Mediterranean means it is not only Saint Tropez and the Côte d'Azure which has been starved of wind.
And so Tony Langley's Gladiator goes into the weekend holding a three points lead over Shawn & Tina Kang's Alpha + with Takashi Okura's Sled and Jean-Luc Petithuguenin's French boat Paprec both three points behind Alpha +.
PRO Maria Torrijo explained, "We waited for so long and when we thought we could start the wind just dropped again and that was it. Normally there is no limit each day, we can just wait if we think the wind will come but today the only chance when we had a wind from the south as we were expecting but it died away. Sunday does look good and we should have some good races, tomorrow not as much so, but this can happen everywhere, we are just being unlucky."
And the Italian navigator Andrea Visintini, world champion in 2021 on Sled, highlighted, "It is a hard situation, we are having these difficult days, it is not heating enough to get a decent sea breeze and there is no gradient breeze around at all, the isobars are so far apart. It is very much a stalled situation, not much is happening. There should be a front going through tonight so things will get moving a bit, but the forecast for tomorrow is still all over the place.
But this is common around the Mediterranean just now, but the situation with no fronts getting through, it has been stalled for a week, is not so common, it can happen anywhere in the Med.
But we stay focused, we drink a lot of water to stay hydrated and we do track all the shifts and keep watching the weather all the time. The wind went as far right as we needed, where it was forecast to go, 170-180 degrees, but that was not enough and the cloud came in."