Sebastian Kördel is back in full swing. Just over a month after the shock of 28th place at the World Championships, the 2022 iQFoil World Champion and 2023 runner-up is in impressive form. Although the 33-year-old also opened the iQFoil Games in Cadiz with an early start and 11th place, he then went on a run of six race wins in a row before a heavy crash stopped him yesterday. But even his non-participation in the ninth race in total did not change the fact that Kördel was leading the iQFoil Games classification two days before the final. Behind him, Michael Polak from Poland and Noah Lyons from the USA are in the medal positions.
Fall after a brilliant series
Now, at the end of his dream series, Kördel is fighting to finish the series in the best possible way. He explained why this is the case himself on Thursday: "Unfortunately, in the fifth race in the leading position during the barrel manoeuvre into the downwind, I laid down so stupidly that I thought my thigh was broken. I crashed into the boom at full speed with the outside of my thigh just below the neck of my thigh. I had to retire from the race."
The consequences are painful, as Kördel said late in the afternoon: "I can stand on my leg, but I can only put weight on the muscle if I'm in a lot of pain. I don't know if I'll even be able to get on the water tomorrow. At the moment I'm trying to get as much ice on it as possible. Let's see what happens. If necessary, just painkillers, depending on what the Nada allows." The National Anti Doping Agency (Nada) stipulates exactly what athletes are allowed to use to treat injuries - and what they are not allowed to use.
Can Kördel finish the iQFoil Games before Cadiz?
The good news for Kördel was his top performance up until the crash: "My speed is good. And the early start on the first day is very questionable. On the video you can only see the tip of a board and not my sail number. I'm pretty sure that Spain 95 was above and in front of me at zero. It's probably the tip of his board. I just come out with more speed and then I can be seen. The video of the pin doesn't exist because the video wasn't started in my heat, it was stopped. So I was thrown out on suspicion. Annoying, but that's the way it is. Today went really well. I was definitely the fastest on the cross and on the reach."
Both the German iQFoil windsurfers and the German women's windsurfers have already secured their national starting places for the Olympic regatta in the Bay of Marseille this summer. In both disciplines, however, the top athletes still have to fulfil the DOSB standard and collect enough points for individual qualification in order to make it to the Olympics. This can currently be done at the iQFoil Games in Cadiz and at the Spanish classic Trofeo Pricesa Sofía at the beginning of April.
How the iQFoil windsurfers qualify for the Olympics
The DOSB standard is fulfilled if the athletes are ranked among the top ten nations after their three specified qualifying regattas and have collected at least nine points. If several teams have achieved this goal, the team with the best points balance will receive the final nomination. Theresa Marie Steinlein seems to be well on the way to achieving this goal for the iQFoil windsurfers. After nine races and two race wins, she is in third place in Cadiz behind Tuva Oppedal from Norway and Katerina Svikova from the Czech Republic. The other German stars Alisa Engelmann and Lena Haverland are currently in 16th and 32nd place respectively. Fabian Wolf is in 23rd place in the men's race, while Nils Präger is currently in 26th place in the U19 rankings, followed by Siddharta Hummler in 39th place. Matti Winkler is in 32nd place in the U17 juniors.
