Olympic Games 2008

The Olympic sailing games 2008 took place in the coastal area near Qingdao, China. During the summer the wind is usually moderate in the Qingdao area. Under these circumstances good insight in current patterns may be decisive for the performance of the sailors.

Due to strong seabed gradients and a jagged rocky coast the sea currents in the sailing competition area can be very complex. This results in the presence of large eddies during some periods of the tidal phase. Hereby, the current direction may change by 180 degrees over a short period of time. It is obvious that these currents strongly affect the sailing speed, especially when there is little wind.

Svašek Hydraulics has constructed a model schematisation of an extensive part of the Chinese Sea for the numerical flow model FINEL. With this model Svašek Hydraulics provided every ten minutes current forecasts in the Qingdao competition area to the Dutch Olympic Sailing team during the Olympic games 2008. View FINEL animation.

The current model has been calibrated using a limited number of current measurements provided by the Chinese Olympic Organisation. The validation of the model has taken place during the training of the Dutch Sailing Team in June 2008.

National coach Jaap Zielhuis of the Dutch Olympic Sailing Team: ‘The current patterns provided by Svašek Hydraulics were very useful. We were very impressed of the accuracy of the current forecasts. The combination of the current forecasts and the observations of the sailors during the competition resulted in the best possible decisions’.

The result was 2 times silver Yngling Women and 470 Women.