Dubai: Competitors representing teams from the UAE were once again in dominant form picking up two vital titles at the Grand Prix of the Mediterranean — the second round on the 2018 UIM-ABP Aquabike Championship held in Olbia, Sardinia, Italy over the weekend.

Victory Team’s Kevin Reiterer, who had gone into the two-legged race with the overall lead, came up with two crucial wins in the motor held on Saturday and Sunday to consolidate his position at the top of the Ski Division GP1 category, while Team Abu Dhabi’s Rashid Al Mulla stayed in the No. 1 position in the Freestyle class.

In Sunday’s second moto, Austrian Reiterer trailed Quinten Bossche throughout the 10 laps to the chequered flag, but a 15-second post-race time penalty handed out to Bossche for not maintaining his line at the start dropped him to second, with Raphael Maurin coming home in third and take the final step of the Grand Prix podium. The result gave Victory Team their maiden Grand Prix title and moved Reiterer 14 points clear at the top of the world championship standings ahead of Maurin.

Fourth place went to Saturday’s parallel slalom winner Mickael Poret, with Stian Schjetlein in fifth ahead of Morgan Poret.

Reiterer was pleased with the overall performance over the weekend that capped the Victory Team’s first major outright win in the world of aquabikes. The 25-year-old hoped that they can forward this momentum going deeper into the season.

“Racing is all about winning cleanly, and that is what we accomplished at Victory Team this weekend. I am at the top of the overall standings and that is a great satisfaction for us all as we have worked really hard to be where we are,” Reiterer told Gulf News from Olbia.

“Now the goal is to get some rest and then start preparing for the next race,” he added.

In the meantime, Team Abu Dhabi’s Al Mulla also made it four heat wins out of four and two Grand Prix victories over successive weekends with another impressive Freestyle performance in the second moto. The 31-year-old Emirati was matched in terms of variety and quantity by world No. 1 Roberto Mariani of Italy, but Al Mulla outscored the defending champion on style, according to the panel of judges who watched the Freestyle entrants perform their spectacular routines on the water. Italy’s Alberto Camerlengo came in third and Russia’s Alexander Kuramshin was a close fourth.

The next action for the riders will be two rounds in China — Nansha from September 14-16 and Shanghai from September 21-23 — after which they will head to the UAE for the last two rounds in November and December.

Standings

Ski Division GP1: 1. Kevin Reiterer (Victory Team UAE — 95pts); 2. Raphael Maurin (France — 81); 3. Mickael Poret (France — 53); 4. Quinten Bossche (Belgium — 52); 5. Stian Schjetlein (Norway — 48).

Freestyle class: 1. Rashid Al Mulla (Team Abu Dhabi UAE — 100pts); 2. Roberto Mariani (Italy — 80); 3. Alberto Camerlengo (Italy — 59); 4. Paulo Miguel Pereira Nunes (Portugal — 50); 5. Alexander Kuramshin (Russia — 38).