Plan set for World Match Racing Tour

The 2024 World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) championship season will have a fifteen-event schedule across ten countries, concluding in December at the WMRT Final Shenzhen Baoan in China. This season marks the 24th consecutive year of WMRT, the world’s longest running professional sailing series.

The tour will kick off in April with back-to-back events at the Ficker Cup and the 59th edition of The Congressional Cup in Long Beach, California. The Congressional Cup is the oldest continuously held sailing match race regatta in the world, and a founding event of WMRT hosted by Long Beach Yacht Club.

Two other founding WMRT events return for 2024 with the 30th edition of GKSS Match Cup in Marstrand, Sweden (July 1-6), and the 72nd edition of the Bermuda Gold Cup (Oct. 29 Oct- Nov. 3).

The King Edward VII Gold Cup awarded at the Bermuda event is one of the most coveted match racing trophies in the world, won by many of sailing’s great names including Chris Dickson (NZL), Peter Gilmour (AUS), Russell Coutts (NZL), Eddie Warden-Owen (GBR), James Spithill (AUS), Ben Ainslie (GBR), Ian Williams (GBR), Taylor Canfield (USA), Johnie Berntsson (SWE) and Francesco Bruni (ITA).

The WMRT season comprises of ‘World Tour’ events and ‘World Championship’ events, each event organized under official World Sailing rules as Open match racing events, allowing both men and women skippers to compete, as well as mixed teams. ‘World Championship’ level events award higher points to the annual WMRT leaderboard.

WMRT Executive Director James Pleasance is eager to build on the success of 2023. “Last year, 72 teams and over 280 sailors competed across the Tour which is testament to the popularity and growth of match racing as one of the most accessible and affordable disciplines of the sport.”

The 2024 schedule will take teams to events in Porto Montenegro and Helsinki in May, Italy’s Lake Ledro in June, and to Sweden and France in July. In August, four back-to-back World Tour events in the USA will again make up the US Grand Slam, inviting teams to travel between Oyster Bay in New York (Oakcliff International and Thompson Cup) to the Chicago Grand Slam and the Detroit Cup.

The DBS Marina Bay Cup in Singapore also re-joins the tour this on September 20-22, sailed in Match 40s in the heart of Marina Bay in central Singapore. The event will take place the same weekend as the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.

Following its debut in 2023, the WMRT season finale will return to the Baoan District of Shenzhen in China as part of a multi-year host agreement. While the tour winner is based on accumulated points throughout the season, the match racing world championship title is awarded to the finale winner.

At the 2023 final in December, Great Britain’s Ian Williams (ChinaOne.Ningbo) mastered challenging conditions to secure a record seventh match racing world championship title in a thrilling final against New Zealand’s Gavin Brady (True Blue Racing USA). New Zealand’s Megan Thomson and her 2.0 Racing team finished third, making her the first female skipper to ever podium at a WMRT Final.

Tour information – 2024 season – Facebook

About the World Match Racing Tour
Founded in 2000, the World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) promotes the sport of match racing around the world and is the longest running global professional series in the sport of sailing. The WMRT is awarded ‘Special Event’ status by the sport’s world governing body – World Sailing – and the winner of the WMRT each year is crowned World Sailing Match Racing World Champion.

Previous champions include Sir Ben Ainslie (GBR), Taylor Canfield (USA), Peter Gilmour (AUS), Magnus Holmberg (SWE), Peter Holmberg (ISV), Adam Minoprio (NZL), Torvar Mirsky (AUS), Bertrand Pace (FRA), Jesper Radich (DEN), Phil Robertson (NZL) and Ian Williams (GBR).

Since 2000, the World Match Racing Tour and its events have awarded over USD24million in prize money to sailors which has helped to contribute to the career pathway of many of today’s professional sailors.