Britain’s Andy Beadsworth finished the 1998 Soling European Championships in Slovenia yesterday in an uncustomary fifteenth place overall. A light and shifty breeze in the last race of the series meant that the 1996 Olympic representative, and his crew of Richard Sydenham and Barry Parkin, had to record a nineteenth position in their overall scoreline.

Having made a good start in race eight – the last in the series – Beadsworth chose a middle track up the first beat whilst the breeze came in from the left hand side of the course and allowed the leading boats to break away and sail their own race.

The British crew managed to make ground on the fleet, moving from thirty fifth at the top mark to nineteenth at the finish, which put them in fifteenth place overall in the 51 strong fleet.

Ukrainian skipper Sergy Pichugin won the regatta from Russian Olympic Silver Medallist Georgi Shaiduko by a significant margin, with triple Olympic gold medallist, Jochen Schuemann third.

“It was undoubtedly a tough regatta, although it has given Andy and his crew a chance to assess certain areas they can now go away and work on before September’s World Championship and pre Olympic regattas.” Said Olympic Manager John Derbyshire.

Of the other British teams, Andy Green completed his first Soling regatta in thirty second place overall, two places in front of George Barker and his crew, whilst Roy Manifold finished in forty fourth place.