новости

— SB20 Russian Open Championship is over and you have shown excellent results. Please, tell just a few words about it and your goals for the World Championship?

— I am delighted that for the first time such a great number of racers and strong crews participated in the event. We are practically satisfied with our team’s performance even with regard to our own underweight. It was extremely hard to compete with quite balanced crews. We are not going to set specific goals and targets that is – we will compete and just try! The wind speed exceeding 8/eight knots, it will be problematic for us to compete. Yet we are enjoying our races!…

— It seems all the teams are fairly optimistic!

— Sure enough when a person is just concentrated only on one goal he will never reach it. The attitude issue should be specific to each race.

— You are a member of the Board of Trustees of SB20 Class National Association. Did you come across any difficulties during its organization?

— Practically not. Tatiana Kurbatova is a professional. I trust her. The team assisting her is not a fresher.

— Do you think SB20 the class has its development outlook?

— The class itself is quite interesting! In my opinion, it can be developed most effectively and intensively in Russia. The boat of such type has almost become a national class. I am more sceptic about the world tendencies in this sense. In Europe SB20 Class is not that perspective — everything depends on stiff com-petition with such boats as Melges20 and J70. You can sit out on J70 and it has a lifeline. Their price is rather high. These yachts are easily both shipped and equipped with heaved keels. Our new President Pavel Savchenko discussed together with us the ways to interest the Spanish public in this. In Russia the boat is very challenging!

— How did you start up in SB20?

— I started racing on SB20 much later than the Russian Association of this Class was established. The re-gattas on this boat are not often for us. We participated in SB20 Russian Open Championship last year! So to say, it was a test of the pen: we were tuning it up in the course of the Championship.

— And you displayed an awesome result!

— Yet we are dissatisfied with some results. I guess fortune smiled at us sometimes. In case of good wind, we will not be ready technically. This time we are thoroughly prepared.

— The helmsman in your crew, Hugo Rocha, is Portuguese, you are Russian and your boatman is a Spa-niard. Why is the yacht flying the Spanish flag then?

— Hugo is Portuguese but he has lived in Barcelona long – so our sails are Spanish. We keep our boats and gear at the port of Arenys de Mar. We also prepare for racing there. This year our crew will accept another crewman, a tactic. We decided to take part in the Russian championships regularly — for us it is going to be an annual scheduled event!