Farewell Wolfgang Gerz 1952-2023

Former Finn champion Wolfgang Gerz passed away suddenly on 2 April at the age of 71. He won the 1981 Finn Gold Cup and later placed fifth at the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. He also returned in the mid-1990s to sail the Finn World Masters, winning in 1997, placing second in 1996 and third in 1995 and 1998.

IFA send its codelences to his family and friends.

Later better known as a Laser Masters sailor, there is an extended tribute to him here.

He wrote a chapter in Photo Finnish, which is repeated below and encapsulates the kind of sailor he was.

“After the disappointment in 1980 of the boycott of the Moscow Games I had not done any sailing at all when our national coach, Peter Stohl, called me in November. He wanted to find out if I would continue and join in a special project for the 1981 Gold Cup. This was to build a German (Mader) Finn with basically a Lanaverre-like hull shape plus a Taylor-like double bottom with perfect weight distribution. I got keen again and we started to work on the project, with first tests on the water in Anzio in early February 1981.

My training partner was Michael Nissen and it all looked good, and we felt really fit – until we met Lasse Hjortnaes and Jørgen Lindhardtsen for the first time in the Palma Regatta. They were usually sailing hundreds of metres ahead – not only compared to us Germans but to the whole fleet. We made some improvements over the next week, trained even harder, but Lasse seemed to be unbeatable, actually winning every single race in which he started.

After the Europeans in Athens in May, where I came sixth, I decided that if I wanted to have the slightest chance it meant going back to the good old Lanaverre. This had been sitting in the garage since June 1980 and was full of dust, airbags broken, fittings partially not working; but I took it to the Niendorf Regatta in May, where Jørgen won. But I suddenly had the feeling that this enormous difference in boat speed and pointing was getting smaller.

So I made the decision to give up the Mader project and tune my Lanaverre back to peak performance. The next regatta was Kieler Woche in mid-June, where I actually managed to beat Lasse for the first time in that year in a single race.

When I crossed the line in front of him, he gave a sound like a dying whale.

I finished second overall – despite the attempts of the German Sailing Federation to disqualify me for carrying an anti-nuclear-power sticker – and went home to Munich for a week without sailing before the Gold Cup. A week later we had a great summer party. I drank a little too much but managed to arrive in Grömitz on the Sunday morning – the last measurement day. I went to bed early, knowing that I had good enough speed and fitness to get second in the Gold Cup if everything worked out well.

As it turned out, Lasse had obviously lost his invincible touch after Kiel. The first race was in light and tricky conditions – Lasse was second and I was fourth – followed by beautiful weather with medium winds and perfect waves for surfing and planning.

All the torture of the previous months had obviously made me faster than ever on reaches and downwind. Lasse was still superior upwind, but not enough to resist my downhill speed. With this, I also benefited from the old Olympic course, which was triangle, downwind, triangle. The result was a total score of 4, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2 and the first Gold Cup for a German since Willy Kuhweide.

Looking back, all of us in the German team couldn’t believe how stupid we had been. Whereas the Danes had been sailing all winter with their previous boats – fairly well used Vanguards – we just started in February, and with a new boat, which we tested against the Vanguard of Michael Nissen but never against the Lanaverre which had been the fastest German boat throughout the previous two years.

What happened to Lasse? He got his revenge in 1982, winning his first Gold Cup in Medemblik with myself in fourth.

For the history of the Finn, I was probably the last Gold Cup winner below 80 kg and my Lanaverre the last boat that was at least half wood.

For the rest of the Needlespar era, it was now clear that the perfect boat-mast combination was not a super-stiff hull with an appropriate mast, but actually a fairly stiff mast sideways with a fairly soft and flexible deck in specific areas.”