Marta Hlavaty’s POL-111 Report : I still can’t believe that! This is my first World Title ever in my life! I’m double happy because I managed to get both European and World titles this year. This is the biggest reward for me for the end of season, as I was training really hard this year with my brother and all Polish team. In Portugal I had close fight with Allison Shreeve till the very last race. We were equal points for half the competition, so it was extra stressful for me, especially that earlier I’ve never beaten Allison in FW.

The beginning was great. I won three races, one by one using my secret weapon that I didn’t have during Europeans, which was an 11m TR4. Then we had two days of medium wind and I found it as a very interesting and tough competition mainly with Allison and Olga UKR9.

The fourth day showed up as windy one. In those conditions Allison was very fast, so she won three races that day, which pushed me to second. In more than 22-23knt I had a problem with choosing sail size. I had 10.0 and then 8.4 which was fast on up-winds, but downwind I couldn’t catch up with Allison on 9.8. Now I’m sure I should set up 9.2 for high winds instead of 8.4.

So being in second with the same points all during the fifth day I was praying for at least one more race. Some breeze came just for thirty minutes. The very fast reaction of the race committee managed an eleventh race for the women's fleet. I won this race, which gave me an advantage of a 1 point lead over Allison. And that's how it finished, just perfect for me:)

Generally the fleet was very strong, as we had such big names from female racing like Allison Shreeve, Olga Maslivets, Sarah Hebert, Verena Fauster and more, so I had great time and great experience racing with all of these girls in Portugal. For me it’s the biggest success ever and a really important moment in my career. Now I know I can win!!! I believe if I set my mind to winning it will happen more and more. It’s incredible how much success motivates for the future. You feel like winning everything at this moment. That’s how I feel now! So I’m extremly "hungry” for the next racing season.

I’m happy that I made so much effort to finish in 1st place. And I’m very grateful for all people who were helping me this year and who were helping me to  believe that I can do it :) It would be hard to mention everyone, but special thanks to MauiSails, Bogo, and my brother Pawel.

Dennis Littel Report : Together with Femke (H19) and Dirk Doppenberg (NED51) we went to Portimao for the Formula World Championships. We arrived there three days before the event actually started so we could tune up and get ready for these conditions. I knew from last year that the conditions could be really strong.

Most of the time the wind starts around 15:00 blowing from an off-shore direction. Because it's this direction we knew that this can give gusty and shifty conditions, and this exactly what we got during the competitions days. In total we did eleven races, and at least nine of them were in really strong wind conditions. Because in the Netherlands they changed the racing format to Formula and Slalom together (which means we switch to slalom if the wind gets above 15 knots...) we were not well prepared enough. Hopefully we will change this next year, so the Dutch level will get a new boost.

Anyway, there were around eighty-five guys on the starting line so it was really hectic during the starts. Every race I had quite good starts so many times

I made the first upwind mark in the top 3-5, but then in the downwind I had control problems which put me back a couple of places. In the end it brought me to a 8th position overall, which is my best result on a world championship and top ten was my goal so I'm happy with this. For Dirk it was his first Formula Worlds and he showed off really good skills by finishing 21st with some top 15 results.

Of course after the Europeans many people thought I could do a top 5 finish again, but my reaction always was: "Every event, everyone starts from zero again and anything is open from there on". So next event we just go for it again!

Photos : Irek Stosik (www.fotostart.net) & Monika Rohde