15 crews from six countries travelled Szczecin, in Poland for the Polish Open Match Racing Championship, along with being apart of the World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) 2025. The event hosts were excited to announce that 10 skippers from the top World Sailing Match Racing Rankings were on the starting line! This series is run in RS Sailing’s RS21 keelboats.
The RS21 has shown its versatility and durability during this event. Teams described the boats as easy to helm, while quite responsive and vibrant to race. It is a great boat for many formats of racing, hence yacht clubs around the world have chosen the RS21. Both from a logistical (6 boats fit in 1 container) and performance point of view the RS21 is an exciting solution for many event organizers and the International Classes.
Compared to One Design Racing, the Match Racing format has a different structure to it. It starts with a ‘Round Robin’ stage where the boats get split into Team A and Team B. The top 3 teams from each group then advance to the Quarterfinals, while the last team from Group B is eliminated. The other team will fight in RPA and RPB for the remaining two spots in the Quarterfinals in best of 3 matches. When it comes to the Quarterfinals, Semifinals and Final, best of 5 is in place, which will then determine the champions.
The Racing
The first races of Szczecin Match Race 2025 kicked off on Friday 17th October.
After the first day of the ‘Round Robin’ phase Borch (Denmark), Zbroja (Poland), and Eon (France) advanced straight to the quarterfinals, while Bal (Netherlands), Stańczyk (Poland), Tarnacki (Poland), and D’Amodio (France) had to fight for the remaining spot. Unfortunately, Hameeteman (Netherlands) was the first to be eliminated. The second day of the ‘Round Robin’ saw Tom Foucher (France), Martin Allix (France) and Bjorn Hansen (Sweden) advanced to the quarterfinals. The Polish teams went head-to-head where, Stańczyk and Gołębiowski went through the first round of repechage, while Michał Gryglewski and Piotr Harasimowicz were eliminated from the competition. Then Marek Stańczyk lost to Australian Tom Picot, so Poland was then represented only by Patryk Zbroja and Jakub Gołębiowski, who had defeated Lennard Bal.
The quarterfinals were up next where French teams, Foucher and Allix, defeated their rivals Victorien Eon and Patryk Zbroja. Picot eventually lost to Borch and Gołębiowski won the last, fifth race of the quarterfinals against Hansen literally at the very finish line.
When it came down to the semi-finals Foucher defeated Gołębiowski, and Borch advanced to the final defeating Allix , where he took out Foucher, winning against him from the starting line and maintaining his advantage until the finish in both races. An amazing perforamce from Kuba Gołębiowski’s crew ended as they were beaten by Martin Allix and so finally took 4th place.
Team Borch then went on to win the Szczecin Match Race 2025! Second place went to Tom Foucher and Martin Allix took third place, defeating Kuba Gołębiowski.
Kuba Gołębiowski secured the Polish Champion title for the third time in a row, keeping the trophy once again! Patryk Zbroja took the silver, and Marek Stańczyk finished in third place!
Here is the overall standings:
- DEN Jeppe Borch
- FRA Tom Foucher
- FRA Martin Allix
- POL Kuba Gołębiowski
- POL Patryk Zbroja
- FRA Victorien Eon
- SWE Björn Hansen
- AUS Tom Picot
- NED Lennard Bal
- POL Marek Stańczyk
- POL Przemysław Tarnacki
- POL Piotr Harasimowicz
- FRA Julia D’Amodio
- POL Michał Gryglewski
- NED Paul Hameeteman
Congratulations to all the winners, we look forward following the rest of the up-and-coming events!
More information about the Polish Match Tour can be found on the polishmatch.pl website, as well as on Facebook and Instagram.
