First glimpse of Tokyo 2020 at 470 World Championships

The 2017 470 World Championships is taking place July 10-15 at the Nautical Club of Thessaloniki, Greece.

A huge influx of young and new teams will take to the starting line and face off against the more experienced campaigners and big names in the fleet. As the first World Championship of the four-year lead up to Tokyo 2020, the event will be a benchmark for teams seeking performance indicators as they come together against an international line-up.

One hundred and thirty-three teams have entered, with sixty teams in the 470 Women and seventy-three in the 470 Men. Three USA teams are competing from North America: Stuart McNay/ David Hughes, Lucas Calabrese/ Ian MacDiarmid, and Wiley Rogers/ Jack Parkin.

Ahead of the 470 Worlds, the 470 Class Development Programme has been in full swing, with teams from Ecuador, Hong Kong, India, Philippines, South Africa and Thailand joining a coaching clinic. Four-time 470 World Champion Sofia Bekatorou (GRE) has been busy transferring her knowledge and expertise.

“It has been really inspiring starting this new project with the 470 Class and supporting developing nations is something I have wanted to do for a long time,” said Bekatorou. “Having this opportunity is great. It is really nice to see the dreams in their eyes of participating in the Olympics. Putting the fundamentals in place and understanding the amount of work they need to put in to become really good sailors and perform has been part of this week’s programme.”

Racing begins tomorrow on the Thermaikos Gulf with three races scheduled. The event format has a 5 race qualification series and 6 race final series scheduled for the 470 Men and 470 Women fleets, before the top 10 teams advance to the final Medal Race on July 15.

Races will take place over two race courses, for each of the men’s and women’s fleets. Fleets will be seeded for the five race Qualification Series into yellow and blue fleets, before being split into gold and silver for the six race Final Series. The top ten teams in the men’s and women’s fleets will advance to the Medal Races on Saturday 15 July 2017.

All six continents are represented in the 32 nations competing at the 2017 470 World Championships: Australia, Austria, Chile, China, Ecuador, France, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, and USA.

10-11 July – Qualification Series (5 races)
12-14 July – Final Series (6 races)
15 July – Medal Races, Closing Ceremony/Prize Giving

Event details – Entry Lists – Facebook