If Monday was Champagne sailing in Hyères, Tuesday (21 April) was a Mediterranean Millésimé — the vintage. Bright bobbing sails stretching across the Bay of Hyères as far as the eye could see between the Giens peninsula and the Îles d’Or with the east-south-easterly wind of 8-12 knots gradually shifting right under the influence of the thermal currents as the land heated up faster than the sea.
But the thing about Champagne sailing is that someone else is usually doing the sailing and you are not usually racing for your professional future. A battle of inches is not the same as a battle of survival, but it’s still a battle, and even seeing the wind shifts can be tricky with an unending sun shining on your course and hiding the shifting pressure lanes. Those that managed climbed the ladder.
“Such a tricky day out there, it was definitely a game of inches for sure,” said Ireland’s Eve McMahon, ILCA 6 champion in Palma and in the lead groups again here. “It was hard to know which side would pay, and with the sun right on our racecourse it was so hard to see which side. The pressure was on.”
Ireland’s Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove are hot on the heels of the USA’s Andrew Mollerus and Trevor Bornarth in the Men’s 49er competition | Credit: Sailing Energy/French Olympic Week Hyères - TPM
The game of ILCA inches saw Netherlands’ Maxime van de Werken-Jonker take the overall lead from McMahon, who dropped to fourth behind Italy’s 2025 SOF champion, Chiara Benini Floriani in second.
“A couple of mistakes out there for me, but just looking forward to taking it into tomorrow and learning from them,” Eve added. “[On the new format] I don't necessarily think it changes my week. I'm a pretty consistent sailor, and sometimes it rewards it, and sometimes it doesn’t.
“We have a slight change from the format from Palma, whereas this time we can discard our ranking position that we take into tomorrow. I’m still trying to trying to get used to it, not yet changing how I sail.
“[On Hyères conditions today] it was not really familiar. I always come here just for the event, so I don't really get that much pre-training in and usually it's absolutely nuking Mistral and freezing cold, so this is like glamour conditions compared to that. And when we were training in Palma as well, it was freezing, so this is really nice to race in. I started racing here when I was super young, but I was just getting demolished. I think this is like my fourth or fifth year?
‘Every event, somebody’s raising the bar, and we all have to catch that person’
“It definitely is champagne sailing. It’d be nice to have some bigger waves, but I mean, I can’t complain at all. We’re lucky to have the conditions. We’re efficient out on the water, three races today.
The level of the fleet is insane. I mean, all the girls have gotten really consistent over all the conditions. So, to be the best, you really want to be good in all conditions, and I think every event, somebody’s raising the bar, and we all have to catch that person. There’s some girls who are, like, crazy experienced with 10-plus years on me, but I am just looking forward to giving them a good battle.”
Elsewhere, in the Men’s 49er competition, the USA’s Andrew Mollerus and Trevor Bornarth kept their lead over Ireland’s Robert Dickson and Seán Waddilove, fourth at the Paris 2024 Olympics. Two victories in the first two races in yellow fleet saw Italy’s Lorenzo Pezzilli and Circolo Velico Ravennate Tobia Torroni jump into contention in a compressed leaderboard.
Wednesday will provide quite a different postcard from Hyères with the pressure rising in more ways than one, with easterly winds building past 20 knots and the event moving from the preliminary to the elimination phase (Wednesday to Friday) before two medal races on Saturday.
