Largest ever turn out

The Optimist fleet are preparing for their biggest ever UK Nationals

This year’s Volvo Musto National Championships will see a record entry of 379 young sailors competing at the annual event, which aptly coincides with the Optimist class’s 60th Diamond Anniversary.

Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy will be the host for this year’s event taking place from 28 July - 3 August. The sailors will race in three groups; the senior fleet aged 13 to 15, junior fleet aged 12 and under and the regatta fleet for those new to racing.

Some of the favourites to be crowned Volvo Musto Optimist National Champion this year will be the seven young sailors who have recently returned from the Optimist European Championships (10 – 18 July) held out in Athens, Greece. David Grant (Cornwall), Ben Harden (Essex), Callum Murdock (Oxford), Tara Gill Taylor (Hampshire), Hermione Stanley (Oxford), Jane Sceales (Isle of Wight) and Anna Burnet (Helensburgh) will all be in contention. Anna Burnet was the best placed British sailor at the European Championships finishing 17th out of 86 Optimists in the female fleet.

Missing from the Volvo Musto Optimist National Championships will be James Grant (Cornwall), Phil Sparks (Dorset), Aaron Smith (Surrey), Christian Townrow (Cornwall) and Ben Robinson (Merseyside), who are competing for Great Britain at the Optimist Worlds, in Sardinia. The Worlds team and European team were both selected at the Optimist Selection trials earlier this year won by James Grant, with reigning double Optimist National Champion Phil Sparks in second place.

Sailors from the Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Ireland, United Arab Emirates, USA, France, Hong Kong and Bermuda will be amongst the 383 youngsters competing at the annual championship in Weymouth.

The Optimist is the largest youth class in the UK and has over 150,000 young sailors competing across the globe. The 2.3 meter boat has helped groom some of the UK’s great sailing names, including double Olympic gold and silver medallist Ben Ainslie, who won the event in 1992 aged 15. Fellow Olympic medallist and Team Volvo for life sailor Nick Rogers also won the event a year before Ainslie.

“The Optimist Nationals was the first major event I ever won and it really was a stepping stone through to the RYA National Youth Programme and to the Olympics. It is great to see the event still growing in popularity and size,” explained Nick Rogers.

The regatta’s host venue is the state-of-the-art 7.85 million pound Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy. As the future London 2012 Olympic venue, this gives the young sailors a great chance to experience the sights and sounds of a top class sailing centre.

The Volvo and Musto sponsorship of the Optimist class includes the National, Inland and End of Season Championships.