Lion of Finland on podium at Kieler Woche 2020!
Daughter-Father duo Räisänen best Finnish sailors in Kieler Woche 2020
Team Lion of Finland ( FIN-5) Kirsikka and Mikko Räisänen won bronze medal in Kieler Woche 2020 “corona edition”. Regatta was earlier postponed due to Covid pandemic and finally all sailors who were missing a lot Kiel´s wonderful atmosphere were finally be able to race.
This years regatta was mostly windy and very windy. In the last days of racing sailors faced 45 knots gusts.
Our Finnish duo, with their brand new Edge F18, were the whole regatta within top three boats. Unfortunately in the last race Kirsikka and Mikko Räisänen capzised and silver medal was slipping out of their hands to German F18 veteran Robert Schutz and his crew Rea Khul.
“All in all this was our main goal of this extraordinary racing season. We are more than happy with our third position even though silver was also possible” says crew Kirsikka, who has been sailing F18 with his dad since year 2016.
Regatta was won by French/Danish team Cedric Bader / Nicolaj Bjørnholt. It was no doubt they were fastest in all starts execpt one (2.). Congrats Cedric & Nicolaj!
Lion of Finland sailing teams third place in Kieler Woche was the best ever positioning which Finnish F18 sailors have achieved.
“I believe that there are some fundamental things which affected to our great succes here in Kiel. Training toether with former World- and Olympic Champions Dany Pascalidis and Trigonis Konstantinos, Great 1D-sails which were designed during the winter seasons and of course our new Edge boat”, says Mikko Räisänen.
Next year Lion of Finland sailing team is going to participate, hopefully summer edition of Kieler Woche and naturally Worlds 2021 which are held in Italy.
This years Kieler Woche, olympic sailors and sailors from different international classes were racing at the same time. In regatta there were quite many Finnish olympic sailors, but none of them was able to climb on to the podium places like duo Räisänen did.
