RYA Team GBR’s World Class Performance Elite Soling team of Andy Beadsworth (from Titchfield in Hampshire), Barry Parkin (Windlesham in Surrey) and Richard Sydenham (Hamble in Hampshire) won three of their four opening matches at the 2000 Soling European Match Racing Championships at Berlin in Germany this afternoon.

In steady winds of 10 – 12 knots on Lake Wannsee, Beadsworth and his crew beat Roy Heiner, (Netherlands), currently ranked first in the ISAF O’Neill world standings, Herman Johannessen (Norway) and Christian Binder (Austria) although they lost their match against Morozov (Belarus) after some confusion with a passenger ferry. They will complete the remainder of their round robin tomorrow.

The fifteen boat fleet is split into two groups of seven (group A) and eight boats (group B; Beadsworth’s group) for the opening round with the top four crews from each group progressing into an eight boat round robin to decide the semi finalists.

The line up includes seventy five percent of the teams that competed in last months IBM Sydney Harbour Regatta (Pre Olympics) in Sydney, Australia and a number of those who are expected to contest the Soling class medals at next year’s Olympic Games.

The top five overall crews from Berlin will each qualify for a place at the Soling World Match Racing Championships (Infanta Cristina) at Cadiz in Spain next March.