Lying 400 km east of Moscow’s Red Square, the confluence of the Volga and Oka Rivers and the Kremlin fort and Chkalov Stairs overlooking the sailing area, was the setting for the sixth regatta in the Russian J/70 Sailing League. Eleven teams from across Russia showed up for the penultimate regatta at Nizhny in the season-long Russia J/70 Sailing League that started out in April at the Black Sea resort of Sochi and will finish the season there for their Grand Finale. Those teams included Koreg Sailing Team (Sochi, helmsman Oleg Kuzmin), QPRO Sailing Team (Moscow, Egor Zuev), CARAMBA! (Moscow, Dmitry Kuznetsov), Calypso (Tuapse/ Moscow, Vladimir Shishkin), Traktor Sailing Team (Chelyabinsk, Eduard Podshivalov), PEK: SPORT (Moscow, Maxim Kuzmin), Ugar Crew (Moscow, Alisa Kirilyuk), ZidArt Sailing Team Moscow, Zoran Paunovich), Team Nizhny Novgorod Children’s River Shipping Company (Nizhny Novgorod, Danila Lysanov), Tramontana (Nizhny Novgorod, Yuri Luzhbin) and the Winners Sailing Team (St. Petersburg, Victor Kapitonenko). The sailing teams were treated with good sailing conditions all weekend long. Each team sailed 27 races, seven on Friday, 13 on Saturday, and 13 more on Sunday. The winner of the regatta was Moscow’s PEK: SPORT, which was skippered by Maxim Kuzmin; the crew consisted of Vadim Filatov, Dmitry Ievlev, Dmitry Popkov and Konstantin Besputin. They joined the Russian J/70 Sailing League at the fourth stage of the season in Pskov (Krivsk). They won the regatta, repeated their winning performance in St. Petersburg, and now they did the same in Nizhny Novgorod. The first day PEK: SPORT did not perform well. But then, they found their form and after the second day of sailing ended up in second overall in the provisional rankings. Then, after another solid performance on Sunday’s finale, they had six firsts and 14 more podium finishes. Taking the silver for the regatta was another Moscow team, QPRO Sailing Team, with skipper Egor Zuev and crew of Denis Rozhkov, Alexander Grishunin and Vyacheslav Bukin. The bronze was taken by the Sochi KOREG Sailing Team, skippered by Oleg Kuzmin with crew of Inal Berbekov, Artem Avetisyan, Andrei Ignatenko and Yulia Dmitrienko. The gap between silver and bronze was only 4 points. The Grand Finale for the Russian J/70 Sailing League takes place in Sochi from October 19-22. So far, six stages have been held in Sochi, Sevastopol, Moscow, Pskov (Krivsk), St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod. After the sixth stage, the leading trio has not changed for the overall series. Leading at the current time is the QPRO Sailing Team from Moscow, followed by the KOREG Sailing Team from Sochi in second place, then the CARAMBA! team from Moscow in third, the CALYPSO team from Yuapse/Moscow in fourth and the PEK: SPORT team from Moscow in fifth place. For more Russian J/70 Sailing League information, visit https://rusyf.ru/.

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