On Lake Garda, the Schneiter family’s Team Tilt, managed by father Alex and steered by Olympic 49er sailor son Sébastien, was crowned first ever GC32 World Champion. Apart from a brief falter in today’s final race, the Swiss team never finished a race lower than fourth, despite tricky conditions, a variety of race courses and wind strengths that Lake Garda threw at the 13 teams.
In the same year as they finished second overall on the GC32 Racing Tour in 2016, Sébastien Schneiter competed in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and last year skippered the Swiss team in the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup. The young Team Tilt crew returned to GC32 sailing here with maturity. and now is GC32 World Champion.
“We had great team work – it worked really well on board – and short, but good preparation for this event,” explained Schneiter. “We definitely learned a lot from the Youth America’s Cup. Here we managed to sail fast while staying calm.”
Team Tilt’s performance was all the more remarkable following a disastrous opening day that left them lying 11th overall. “We were unlucky and we didn’t sail that well,” Schneiter admitted. “We knew we were much better than that – we were just keen to keep racing to improve our ranking.” Incredibly, the Swiss team turned this around in just one day, leading at the end of day two.