To determine the best sailing nation

The Star Sailors League (SSL) is the gift that keeps on giving, founded in 2013 as a reaction to the Star Class no longer being in the Olympic Games. Privately funded by Michel Niklaus, with substantial prize money at invitation-only Star events, the SSL announced two years ago its next vision: Star Sailors League Nations Gold Cup.

With the initial plan to be ready in 2021, next year will be more about training as the mission continues to grow the SSL Gold Cup into what it will be like the ‘football world cup’ in sailing to determine the best sailing nation of the world:

• 56 nations entered to challenge each other
• Onboard 47-foot boats provided by the organization
• In a two-month event (May-June 2022) on Lake Neuchatel and Lake Geneva, Switzerland

The nationality rule requires all sailors to have the passport of the country, following the Olympic regulations, and the sailors are partly nominated by Captains, and partly are coming from the SSL Ranking, now taking into account over 100,000 athletes, competing in more than 15,000 regattas in 80+ classes all over the world.

All of this is reality, and over the 2020 Summer, in spite of the global pandemic, many teams have come to train on Lake Neuchatel at the SSL Headquarter, onboard the SSL47: France, Poland, Estonia, Greece, Switzerland, Bulgaria to name a few.

Many others have organized trainings in their country like Hungary, Turkey, Iran, and so many have already booked their training session for 2021. From May to October, the SSL Headquarters will host at least a team per week including a two-week long SSL Gold Cup Test Event in September.

Additional details:

1. SSL GOLD CUP ENTRY LIST
Fifty-six Nations have entered the SSL Gold Cup 2022, lead by 56 top of the rank Captains selected by the SSL Board over the last couple of years. America’s Cup winner John Bertrand for Australia, Louis Vuitton Cup winner Paul Cayard for USA, offshore legend Loick Peyron for France, Olympic champions Santi Lange for Argentina, Sofia Bekatorou for Greece and Freddy Lööf for Sweden, just to mention some of them.

2. SSL NATIONS RANKING
The teams will join the SSL Gold Cup competition according to their pre-event seeding. This seeding will be based on the SSL Nations Ranking. The lowest seeded nations will start in the earliest qualification rounds for the SSL Gold Cup while the more successful ones will join the competition subsequently.

Concept
The SSL Nations Ranking takes into account the position in the SSL Ranking of the best sailors of each country: the five best Skippers + the two best from the Crew ranking. The SSL calculation system sums up the positions of all seven of them (not their points). The nation with fewer points is the leader of the SSL Nations Ranking.

Timing
It will be updated and presented every 10th of the month. Here’s the November issue:

3. SSL GOLD CUP TEAM EMBLEMS
Every team will have a game-name and an emblem representing the country’s tradition and building recognition. Creating the names and coats of arms alongside 56 teams has proven to be a an extensive yet very rewarding task. The wall of fame is taking shape, and it highlights the many cultures represented by the 56 nations making up the SSL Gold Cup 2022.

4. SSL FINALS 2021
The SSL Finals is the master event in sailing, organized since 2013 at the end of the sailing season. The SSL Finals is the playoff competition among sailors racing in the Olympic circuits, match racing, America’s Cup, SailGP, 52 Super Series and all of the international classes, its goal is to crown the best Skipper and best Crew of the season. The top 10 Skippers of the SSL Ranking, and up to 15 other sailors with outstanding results in the season or great highlights in their career are invited by SSL to compete every year in December. Due to a very limited number of international events in 2020 and strong travel restrictions all over the world, the fundamental pillars of the SSL Finals are not in place. Therefore, the SSL has decided to postpone the 8th SSL Finals from 2020 to 2021. We’ll be back with one of the most appreciated events of the year at the end of 2021.

Source: SSL, Scuttlebutt