The Worlds Best Gather in Auckland

Sixteen teams, nearly one hundred sailors, fifteen International Umpires and Judges, and one title. 2003 will see the fifth holding of this prestigious biennial event, which has grown year on year.

Starting on the very last day of January and being raced at a venue recently used to seeing the likes of Larry Ellison, Tom Cruise, and Dennis Conner, gracing it’s pavements and waterways alike, the 2003 ISAF Team Racing Worlds will see the very best battling it out in the Viaduct Basin.

Organised by the New Zealand Team Racing Association, Yachting New Zealand, and ISAF, for the first time, the most important team-racing event in the calendar, and the most famous sailing regatta will be in the same venue. The timing of the Championship has been carefully planned to showcase the thrills and spills that Team Racing can bring to spectators. Taking place between the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals and the America’s Cup Match, racing will be contested within touching distance of the shore and with the backdrop of the Americas Cup Village the event will certainly be spectacular and very memorable for all.

The Viaduct Basin and America’s Cup Village showing the racing area

The Format

In the grand scheme of things team racing is a relatively new addition to the sport of sailing, now popular at schools, clubs and Universities around the world, the first World Championship was held in Great Britain in 1995. This Year, identical fleets of 420 dinghies have been provided, in which, two tams of three boats battle to archive the best team result. Close and tactical, and exciting to watch, each team is colour co-ordinated, and fiercely competitive.

Like the America’s Cup and Match Racing circuits, each race is governed on the water by a team of International Umpires and Judges, ensuring the highest level of rule compliance and racing, and making sure that the team scoring less than ten points at the finish of each race is the winner. This years Chief Umpire is Chris Atkins (GBR), who heads an international team of officials from six nations including Ireland, India, New Zealand Japan, and Australia, as well as Great Britain.

The sixteen teams will all race each other in an initial full round robin comprising of a total of 240 short races. Following this, each team will have a seeded position, which will produce, following a repechage round, a Gold and Silver League, and ultimately the 2003 World Team Racing Champion. For the Full proposed Format of competition, please click here. (Format is subject to change).

The Teams

Hailing from nine countries, each of the sixteen teams have gone through rigorous selection trials and training for this one moment. There do however emerge some favourites and some potential upsets to the pecking order.

Two Time winners New Zealand, who won both the event in the Czech Republic in 2001, and Ireland in 1999, must be the clear favourites for the title, and with two teams entered, have the strength to go all the way. In 2001, they sailed one crucial race against their main competition USA 2 and things were not decided until the final leg, when with some supreme light wind sailing NZL broke the oppositions cover to take a 1,2,5 win, and their second Championship. Essentially the same team has come home to Auckland in a hunt for the hat trick

USA 2, runners up in both 2001 and 1999 will be wanting to avenge their close defeat in 2001, and will much the same team there will be everything to play for. Other potential victors come in the form of the GBR1 Team, fresh from their victory in the European Team Racing Championship held in 2002 an third placed at the last Team Racing Worlds.

The IND1 team includes a notable advantage in the form of current 420 World Champion Farokh Tarapore, who given the choice of boat provided for the event, could be seeing a distinct boatspeed advantage over some of the other, more mature sailors.

When the first flight is started on Sunday in Auckland, setting of a week of high Octane, high adrenaline sailing; it will provide the perfect preview for both spectators and competitors, leading up to the America’s Cup Match.