Royalty attends

HRH The Princess Royal is to attend the 2008 RYA Youth National Championships and Trials.

Great Britain’s top Youth sailors will have the chance to show off their talents in front of a Royal audience after confirmation that HRH The Princess Royal will be attending the RYA Youth National Championships and Trials 2008.

More than 250 of the country’s best Under 19 racers will converge on Pwllheli Sailing Club between Saturday 29 March and Friday 4 April to do battle at what is regarded as British Youth sailing’s premier annual racing event.

Having previously attended the RYA Youth Nationals in Largs, Scotland in 2005, HRH The Princess Royal, President of the Royal Yachting Association, will visit Pwllheli to see the latest crop of talented sailors coming through the ranks on Thursday 3 April.

RYA Youth Racing Manager, Simon Wergan, said: “It will be a great privilege for the competitors to race in the company of HRH The Princess Royal and we are very grateful to Her Royal Highness for supporting this event.

“It really is very, very difficult to pick out any winners or even favourites for the titles this year because there are several sailors and crews in each class who have got a very good chance of winning. Those who win the medals really are going to be the ones who have put the best series together over the week.”

Six Youth classes, totalling around 200 boats and some 270 sailors, will race at Pwllheli and among those heading the cast will be new Under 19 29er World champions Max Richardson and Alex Groves who will be looking to add the RYA Youth Nationals crown to their 29er World Youth title.

Meanwhile Evan Scott, who finished Britain’s top ranked Youth sailor at the Senior Laser Standard World Championships in Australia last month with Beijing-bound Paul Goodison and Skandia Team GBR Performance sailor Nick Thompson the only RYA Team GBR Brits ahead of him in Gold Fleet, will hope to go one better than the Youth Nationals Laser silver he won last year with gold this time around. 

Pwllheli, recently shortlisted as a potential London 2012 pre-Games training location by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), will also be keen to show its credentials for hosting the top Olympic Classes sailors in the next four years by laying on a World class RYA Youth Nationals regatta.

The Championships, as always, will form part of the official RYA National Youth Squad review process and act as an indicator for sailor support for the relevant class World and European Championship events over the summer as well as selection for the ISAF Youth Worlds in Denmark in July.

The only class where ISAF Youth Worlds’ selection will not be conducted at the Trials is the girls’ Laser Radial.

The 2008 World Laser Radial Youth Championships take place in Auckland, New Zealand between Monday 24 March and Saturday 29 March and Britain’s top four girls – Chloe Martin, Mel Addy, Hannah Diamond and Sophie Platts – will go head-to-head for the one ISAF Youth Worlds girls’ Radial spot Down Under.

Leading the Brit charge for the boys in New Zealand are Martin Evans, James Spencer and Jak Cornthwaite although they will be racing solely for Radial Youth Worlds bragging rights as there is no ISAF Worlds Radial class event for boys.

Racing gets underway at Pwllheli on Monday 31 March with prize-giving and announcements regarding Britain’s ISAF Youth Worlds team scheduled for Friday 4 April.