Magnificent Seven for Huang and a win for Koska

Breeze of 7 to 9 knots, gusting up to 16 knots later in the day

Threat of thunder and lightning brought fleet ashore early

Héloïse Pégourié breaks her harness and misses a race

Vojtech Koska takes a race off Riccardo Pianosi

Qibin Huang of China has seven wins from seven

Good day for Turkey in the Masters Worlds

Thunder and lightning in the Sardinian sky brought an early close to competition on day two in Torregrande.

It wasn’t all bad though, with three of the four scheduled races completed in the Formula Kite Youth European Championship and four races in the Kitefoil Open Masters World Championship.

In the girls’ fleet, a broken harness meant girls overnight leader Héloïse Pégourié was unable to start the first race. Once back in the harness, however, the French rider pushed hard to win the next two heats and retain the overall lead ahead of two more French competitors, Lysa Caval and Chloe Revil.

“I’ve put myself under pressure now because I’ve used up my two discards with bad races,” frowned Pégourié. “It’s good to win the other races but it’s never by much, the fleet are pushing hard and I can’t afford any more mistakes.”

RARE MISTAKE FROM PIANOSI

In the boy’s fleet, a small chink in Riccardo Pianosi’s armour saw the Italian spoil his run of first places with a second in the opening heat. Pianosi was forced to bail out of a daring port tack start and had to tack out early to avoid tangling with the starboard tackers. Vojtech Koska seized his opportunity, the Czech rider taking his first race win of the series. So Pianosi slips to second overall, just 1 point behind China’s Qibin Huang who has scored a perfect seven from seven heats on his side of the qualifying draw.

On Monday Mattia Maini finished five hours of exams at his school in England, jumped on a plane and flew out to Sardinia just in time for the start of competition. Today he found himself leading a race. “I was ahead of Riccardo [Pianosi] which felt pretty cool,” smiled the 18-year-old from Britain. “He got me in the end but I’m pretty happy to get a second place in that race. I was stoked, and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow and see what gold fleet brings.”

Friday sees the start of gold fleet racing for the boys in the Youth competition, and the forecast is for the sunshine to return to Torregrande Beach.