World Match Racing Tour Reveals 2016 Schedule

Hönö, Sweden (December 11, 2015) – As the World Match Racing Tour seeks to transition to catamaran racing in the M32, the 2016 season has been revealed that will award a $1 million U.S.D. prize to the winner.

The Championship events of this season, which will form a short, four month season that concludes at the new venue for the World Finals in Marstrand in July, will together create a total prize purse of over $2 million U.S.D. to the teams. The current Finals venue is the Monsoon Cup in Malaysia, which concludes the current season January 26-30, 2016.

The 2016 short season Championship Events will be hosted at the venues and on the dates listed:
– Fremantle, Perth, Australia, March 2nd-7th
– Long Beach, Los Angeles, USA, April 5th-10th
– Undisclosed Venue, April 18th-23rd (TBC)
– Copenhagen, Denmark, May 9th-14th
– Newport, RI, USA, May 31st-June 4th
– World Championship Finals, Marstrand, Sweden, July 4th-9th

All events will use the M32 catamaran except for the Congressional Cup in Long Beach, which will continue to use the Catalina 37s which have been part of the event for over two decades.

Six of the ten Tour Card entries for 2016 were awarded after the Argo Group Gold Cup in Bermuda (Oct 6-11) based on the results on the 2015 World Match Racing Tour. The six teams at the top of the leaderboard have all accepted their Tour Card for 2016 and we can therefore confirm the following entries to the WMRT 2016:

– Ian Williams, GBR
– Björn Hansen, SWE
– Taylor Canfield, USV
– Keith Swinton, AUS
– Phil Robertson, NZL
– Eric Monnin, SUI

The final four Tour Cards will be presented during next week.

During the short season there will additionally be 10 WMRT Tour Level Events, which will be presented in a separate press release on December 21st. Application for entries to these events will open up at the same time. At each WMRT Tour Level Event, the top three teams will qualify to a WMRT Championship Event.

Source: WMRT