470 Class gets taste of Olympic venue

The 2019 470 World Championships on August 4-9 has attracted 91 teams from 29 nations to compete at the venue for the 2020 Olympic Games in Enoshima, Japan.

The stage is now set for an 11 race series, followed by a top ten team medal race to decide podium places and select the 6 nations in the women and 4 in the men qualifying to Tokyo 2020 at this the second Olympic qualification event.

Racing is scheduled to get underway tomorrow at 1200 hours with fleets sailing three 45-50 minute races each on course area Sagami. Women will start first and race the outer loop of the trapezoid course, followed by men yellow and then men blue fleets. The men’s fleets will both race the inner loop in order to ensure their sailing conditions are as comparable as possible to each other.

The Worlds is occurring at the same time as the Olympics, and the anticipated heat is to be prepared for.

“It is really hot here in Japan, high temperatures and a lot of humidity and you are sweating all the time,” explained Slovenia’s Veronika Macarol. “We need to do a lot of boat park work and we are all day in the sun.”

Competitors will have plenty of time to acclimate as after the 470 Worlds, Enoshima will host the Olympic Test Event on August 15-22 and then onto 2020 World Cup Series Round 1 – Enoshima from August 25 to September 1.

Event details – Entry list – Results – Facebook

Representing North America:
MEN:
Joshua Yale/ Michael Montagnese (CAN)
Stuart McNay/ David Hughes (USA)
Trevor Davis/ Trevor Bornarth (USA)

WOMEN:
Nikole Barnes/ Lara Dallman-Weiss (USA)
Emily Bornarth/ Laura Slovensky (USA)
Carmen Cowls/ Emma Cowles (USA)
Atlantic Brugman/ Nora Brugman (USA)

Background: Designed in 1963 by the Frenchman André Cornu as a modern fiberglass planing dinghy, the International 470 Class is the class of boat used for both the men’s two person and women’s two person dinghy events at the Olympic Games. Used as Olympic equipment since 1976, where the class was sailed as an open event before the introduction of separate events for men and women in 1988, the 470 is sailed in more than 60 nations around the world.

Source: Luissa Smith