Chicago qualifier for Alpari World Match Racing Tour

Ten teams from the US, Finland, USVI, Australia and New Zealand will descend on the Chicago Match Race Center for three days off the Belmont Harbor shoreline to compete for an invitation to the only USA stop on the professional Alpari World Match Racing Tour, the Chicago Match Cup, which features $75,000 in prize money and some of the toughest competition in the sport.

The Double Round-robin at the Grade 2 Chicago Match Cup Qualifier starts Friday, June 13th, and proceeds through to the Semi-Final and Final Rounds on Sunday, June 15th.

Among the favorites in the field are CMRC’s own Don Wilson, who has done more racing and won more events in the CMRC’s TOM 28 class keel boats, and is the highest-ranked US sailor in the ISAF Open Match Race Rankings at 23rd in the world. But he has Staffan Lindberg from Finland, ranked 10th in the world, and Chris Steele from New Zealand, ranked 22nd in the world, to give he and his team a strong challenge.

Other notables include Steve Lowery, another local-based CMRC skipper, who is ranked 77th in the world but is already warmed up in the TOM 28’s, having finished second only to Wilson in the Final of the last CMRC event, the Grade 3 Spring Invitational. Another team that has had recent success is Chris Poole from the US, who won the Grade 3 Oakcliff Spring Invitational in New York last month and is ranked 28th in the world.

At 63rd in the world, David Chapman from Australia had won the CMRC Autumn Invitational A in 2013, and when not match racing has been campaigning in the highly-competitive Farr 40 Class, where he was awarded “crew member of the year” by Royal Sydney Yachting Squadron.

Wisconsin-based David Niemann is ranked 57th in the world and has been to CMRC only once before, but may have some momentum started to his season with a second place earned at the Oakcliff regatta in May. Another Oakcliff regular, Connecticut-based David Storrs, is ranked 45th in the world and is starting his third season of coming to race at CMRC, hoping to build on an impressive runner-up performance at last September’s Grade 3 Fall Doubleheader A event.

Rounding out the field is US-transplanted Kiwi Scott Dickson ranks 110th in the world and has been to CMRC as both a competitor once and expert commentator several times, but returns by invitation as a competitor, having finished second at the Ficker Cup, the Long Beach YC’s qualifier to the Grade 1 Congressional Cup.

At 306th in the world, recent Brown University graduate and USVI-native Tyler Rice does not yet have a long record of success in match racing, but does bring tremendous talent, energy and enthusiasm from the highly competitive US Intercollegiate scene, and is planning to compete at the ISAF Youth Match Racing World Championship this year.

For more information, results and live feeds on Twitter and Facebook from the CMRC’s Chicago Match Cup Qualifier, visit www.chicagomatchrace.com