The opening day of the 2017 Mercedes-Benz Sylt PWA Super Grand Slam saw a total of 148 sailors from 32 countries registering for the next 10 days of competition which will see the Men’s and Women’s Wave, Men’s Freestyle, Men’s Slalom and Men’s Foil fleets in action.

Most of the day was spent registering or preparing equipment before the official opening ceremony was held at 4pm. The forecast for tomorrow looks light, but then it is looking extremely windy until the end of the week, so we should have plenty of radical action over the coming days.

Earlier the day we briefly caught up with reigning world champion Matteo Iachino (Starboard / Point-7 / Shamal Sunglasses), who has won for the last two years in Sylt and is in contention for the world title again with two events to go, the Italian said: “I’m feeling great coming into the event, so now we just have to wait and see how it goes, but the forecast looks good. I feel even better setup for the light and medium winds now than before which is important here as they usually sail the waves or freestyle in the stronger winds. 

Meanwhile, current vice-world champion and world No.2 in Freestyle – Amado Vrieswijk (JP / Severne) is reportedly a little under the weather and is doing everything he can to be fully fit for Sunday, which currently looks like a possible Freestyle day, but the Bonairean seemed to think that he’ll be fine to sail and he still has another 24 hours to recover before he potentially gets ready to battle for his first freestyle world title.

Fellow freestyler Yentel Caers (JP / Point-7), who injured himself in Fuerteventura is almost back to 100% and ready to compete again as he potentially battles for the world title and the overall podium tomorrow.

With tomorrow looking like it could be another relatively calm day, so we’ll be bringing you a title race update from the legendary Moreno twins with Iballa (Starboard / Severne / Maui Ultra Fins) and Daida (Starboard / Severne / Maui Ultra Fins) set to go head-to-head for the 2017 Women’s PWA Wave World Championship.

With the forecast looking light for Saturday the skippers’ meetings for all fleets will be held at 10am with a first possible start at 11am (GMT+2).

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