World Sailing renews World Match Racing Tour status

World Sailing, the world governing body of the sport, has renewed the Special Event status of the World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) through to 2028. The Special Event Agreement, signed with EFB Group, who took over ownership of the WMRT in December 2018, will see World Sailing work actively together with WMRT to promote the global tour which awards the World Sailing Match Racing World Championship each year. Founded in 2000, the WMRT promotes match racing around the world and is the longest running global professional series in sailing. The WMRT represents a series of independently organised and officially sanctioned and graded match racing events. Teams accumulate points from each of the events towards an overall WMRT global ranking. The top 12 ranked skippers compete in the WMRT Championship Finals at the end of the season to award the official World Sailing Match Racing World Championship. Since 2000, the World Match Racing Tour and its events have awarded over $20million USD in prize money to sailors which has helped to contribute to the career pathway of many of today’s professional sailors.

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Paris 2024 Windsurfer invitation to tender released

At World Sailing’s 2019 Mid-Year Meeting in London, Great Britain, World Sailing’s Council, the main decision making body of the federation, voted on key decisions around the Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing Competition Equipment. The Board’s new recommendation proposed conducting sea trials before World Sailing’s Council selects the Equipment at the 2019 Annual Conference: World Sailing is now inviting manufacturers and Class Associations to tender to be selected as the Men’s and Women’s Windsurfer equipment to be used at the 2024 Olympic Sailing Competition.

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Youth Olympians shine at the Hempel Youth Sailing World Championships

Nacra 15 Youth Olympians came to the forefront on the opening day of racing at the Hempel Youth Sailing World Championships as racing commenced in Gdynia, Poland. The 21-boat Nacra 15 fleet, supplied by Nacra Sailing, features numerous sailors who recently competed at the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Argentina. Of the competitors, Argentina’s Dante Cittadini, the 2018 Youth Worlds and Youth Olympic gold medallist with Teresa Romairone, came in as the favourite with his new crew Maylen Muscia.

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Finland claims Summer Universiade gold thanks to near-perfect final day

Finland captured gold in mixed fleet racing on Friday thanks to a near-perfect performance on the final day of the Napoli 2019 sailing competition at iconic Circolo del Remo e della Vela Italia, in the Bay of Naples. Seeded second going into the eight-team final after collecting 51 points in 16 preliminary contests, the Finnish foursome of skipper Oskari Muhonen and crew members Cecilia Sandman, Catharina Sandman and Alexander Gronblom won three of four races on the afternoon and placed second in the other to end up with a minuscule seven points.

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12 Metre World titles claimed in four divisions

It couldn’t have been any more exciting on the fifth and final day of the 2019 12 Metre World Championship hosted by Ida Lewis Yacht Club and organized by the International Twelve Metre Association’s (ITMA) Americas Fleet. In the fiercely contested eight-boat Modern Division, the stakes were high today for Challenge XII (KA-10), owned and skippered by Jack LeFort of Jamestown, R.I. Last night the team was disqualified after a protest hearing with Courageous (US-26), sailed by a Newport contingent led by Ralph Isham, Steve Glascock, Alexander Auersperg, Ward Marsh and Art Santry (helmsman). Falling from first overall to second, Challenge XII was tied on point score with third-place Courageous and two points behind Enterprise(US-27), helmed by Clay Deutsch of Newport. Going into today’s race LeFort knew that to win his division, he had to beatCourageous and put a boat between his team and Enterprise. He did that and more, closing out Courageous at the start and going on to win the race with a buffer of three boats on Enterprise. (Enterprise and Courageous wound up second and third, respectively.)

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