420 racing at the Portuguese National Championship © Event Media
420 racing at the Portuguese National Championship © Event Media
420 racing at the Portuguese National Championship © Event Media
420 racing at the Portuguese National Championship © Event Media
Beatriz Gago/Marta Fortunato racing at the Portuguese National Championship © Event Media
420 racing at the Portuguese National Championship © Event Media
420 racing at the Portuguese National Championship © Event Media
PORTUGUESE NATIONALS IS PERFECT TRAINING GROUND FOR 420 WORLDS
The Portuguese 420 National Championships took place at the same venue that will host the 2019 420 Worlds, which will host the world's sailors in Vilamoura in just over 2 months time.
Taking place from 15-18 April, eighty of Portugal's finest young 420 talent pushed themselves to stake a claim on the leaderboard. As always, the central strategy for success is consistency and ultimate winners Luia Niza/Paulo Baptista showed plenty of that skill from race 1. The partnership kicked off with a hat trick of race wins, before settling into a performance which saw them score all finishes inside the top 7, except one discard score of 14.
They made it look easy, claiming the Portuguese Championship title by 16 poitns over Antonio Pereira/Joao Bolina, with Manuel Fortunato/Frederico Baptista finishing third and top placed junior team.
Men, women and junior teams raced together, with Beatriz Gago/Marta Fortunato topping the women's leaderboard in 8th overall.
Two Turkish teams joined the otherwise all-Portuguese line-up, no doubt as part of their preparations for the upcoming 420 Worlds, 3-11 July 2019.
