Oh man, it’s Oman! - we start the Asian Championships
Welcome aboard. We’re in the Gulf state, the Sultanate to be precise, of Oman. Oman, which is the oldest continuously independent state in the Arab world, is situated at the very end of the Arabian Peninsula, the Gulf of Oman is the entry/exit point for the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
We return here as guests of the excellent Oman Sail team, for the 2021 Techno293 & Formula Foil OD Asian Championships. Oman is associated with top class sailing and the Oman Sail team have invested time and energy in building a grass-roots windsurf culture in the country, and bringing a windsurfing event here will be an important step along that path.
If you like windsurfing in great conditions with great facilities, then you’ll be beating a track right here very soon. We’re in Mussanah. It’s a purpose-built resort city west of the capital, Muscat, with great facilities for all kinds of sports, but especially water and board sports. As you can imagine, everything is modern and high class, the sun is warm, and the winds are good.
These championships are a nice warm up for any competitors heading on to the Techno World Championships next week in Italy, but also a warmup event for Oman Sail, they’ve got a busy end to the year coming up. Following on from the Techno Asian Championships, November sees the famous Mussanah Race Week, a full-on sailing week, followed by the 49ers, 49ersFx & Nacra17 World Championships. And their racing year will end with the World Sailing Youth World Championships, which will also be the last event of the year for the Techno293Plus Class.
Not only that, they’re still putting all the pieces back together following the cyclone that hit the region recently! Big up to the team for making this event possible.
It's been a steady first day’s competition, we’ve got 3 classes racing this week, Techno 293OD, Techno 293Plus, and Formula Foil. The 293 OD and 293Plus fleets raced together, and home rider Abdullah Al Sarhi took a clean sweep of victories in the 3 rounds completed to take the early lead. In 293OD it’s another home rider in front, Abdulrahman Al Mujaini. Same story in Formula Foil with Abdulmajeed Al Hadhrami flying his way to the top of the ranking.
You can check out this fantastic place and keep up to date with all the news and the scores as they come in at https://asians2021.internationalwindsurfing.com/