Tornado Euro Champs: Paschalidis-Trigonis

Photo: Martina Barnetova

Photo: Martina Barnetova
After their 3rd Tornado European Championships victory in a row we interviewed Iordanis Paschalidis and Konstantinos Trigonis.
ITA Secretary Andrew Dowley asks the questions.
Congratulations – how does it feel to be European Champions?
For us it is fantastic, we ended the season the way we wanted. It’s great, we are very happy about it and satisfied with our perfect sailing in Torbole.

You had very mixed conditions and weather in Torbole, tell us a little bit about the event and your experiences. First of all the organizing committee did an excellent job. They are professionals in organising sailing events on and off of the water. The conditions were challenging, strong winds with waves, strong winds with choppy water and light winds.
We had every wind condition and that made the regatta difficult. There are some very good sailors that like lake sailing and made the competition very strong.

You had a very close fight with Roland and Nahid Gaebler in every race of the Worlds and Europeans. What do you think of their sailing? They are sailing very consistently, they are fast and very wise during racing. Roland is sailing now with Nahid like he did 10 years ago. He is again the old Roland.
Nahid is a very experienced sailor, a strong person who does not like to make mistakes and lose. She puts the passion into Roland’s sailing and now you see the good results.

A lot of people say that Women can’t handle the Tornado – seeing Carolijn Brouwer, Nahid Gaebler and Christina Loweg sailing so far up the fleet you must have a different view on this? Their results say the opposite, the women won gold, silver and had top ten finishes in the worlds.
It’s sailing, it’s a mind game first of all.

You both started sailing the 470, why did you change to the Tornado? After sailing the 470 for 15 years we felt that we were not improving as sailors. We needed something more exciting, more difficult and something different.
We found all that and even more in the Tornado. The Tornado class is working completely differently from all the other classes. We are all friends we can change opinions about our sailing and we can train all together before major regattas.
These are things that you don’t meet in any other classes. I remember before the Olympic Games in Qingdao all 15 boats were training together like we were training partners. No other Olympic class did that.

Do you think other sailors can make the jump into the Tornado?
It’s a boat that suits all kinds of body types and all kinds of mentalities. Maybe the sailors that come from slow boats need some time to get used to making very fast decisions during racing but this is something that a sailor can learn easily.

Obviously the Tornado class has seen the funded teams disappear since the Tornado was removed from the Olympic programme – why do you continue to sail the boat? Ok a lot of the old sailors have paused their tornado sailing, we think this is mostly for money reasons and because sailing federations stopped supporting the Tornado.
Most of them are waiting for ISAF’s decision to return back.

Do you think the Multihull will make a return to the Olympic program?
We are pretty much sure that a decision like that will be taken soon. We think now that the Americas cup goes into Multihull’s this will put more pressure onto ISAF. The whole sailing world turns multihull… We would like of course to see the Tornado back and we will do our best to help that.

What benefits do you think the Tornado has over others?
With the small experience of sailing an F18 we definitely think the Tornado is the best! But we will repeat the opinion of the old and wise cat sailors:
The Tornado is the most long lasting cat, the fastest, the easiest to sail and finally the highest performance cat out of all the others.

What do you think is next for the Tornado Class?
2016 Olympic games in RIO. Simple!!!

ITA Sec Andrew Dowley:Thank you very much for talking with us—-