Race against the world's top match racers

Amateur match racers invited to race in the Colorcraft Gold Cup in Bermuda

"This is one of the few match racing events in the world where a college sailor or an up-and-coming amateur can go head to head with America's Cup champions like Russell Coutts or Dennis Conner," said Commodore Somers Cooper. "This week we invited eight of the world's best match racers to compete as seeded skippers. Now we're looking for 16 unseeded skippers who will race in the preliminaries."

The Colorcraft Gold Cup is the third event on this season's Swedish Match Grand Prix Sailing Tour, which has taken on new intensity as America's Cup syndicates around the world step up their training for the next challenge. The Colorcraft Gold Cup is raced in 33-foot International One Design sloops on short windward-leeward courses inside Hamilton Harbour. Sailed by a skipper and three crew, the boats fight around tight courses that take the contestants almost up to the bows of the cruise ships moored on Front Street.

The confirmed list of seeded skippers will be announced later this summer but it is expected to include five-times Gold Cup winner and America's Cup champion Russell Coutts, now sailing for Switzerland. Australian Peter Gilmour, a three-time match racing world champion and the 1995 and 1997 Gold Cup winner who currently heads the One World Challenge from Seattle. Briton Andy Green, who won the Gold Cup two years ago and is now part of Britain's new challenge for the America's Cup has also been invited.

The Colorcraft Gold Cup is still formally known as The King Edward VII Gold Cup. The name derives from the British sovereign who presented it in 1907 for a featured race at a Tri-Centenary Regatta at Jamestown, Virginia. This was to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the first English settlement in America. New York sailor Sherman Hoyt, who won the cup, presented it to the RBYC in 1937 for a match racing competition.

Since Hoyt's era, the match-racing format has undergone a series of changes. The biggest occurred in 1989 with the expansion of invitations from eight world-ranked skippers to an additional 16 skippers who pay an entrance fee to compete in the preliminary double round robin competition for eight extra places in the final contest. The organizers saw this as a way to open competition to young and not-so-young hopefuls who might not otherwise be invited to compete.

The 24-skipper format is the largest of its kind in the world. The system continues to this day and the Colorcraft Gold Cup remains as one of the few Grade One match-racing events that offer an opportunity for unranked skippers to break into the match racing circuit.

Last year the unseeded ranks ranged from Dalton Bergan, a Seattle skipper fresh out of collegiate sailing and unranked in world match racing, to Denmark's Sten Mohr, at the time the world's number three-ranked match racer.

For a Notice of Race and an invitation form, unseeded skippers should contact Kevin Blee, the sailing manager, email: rbycsail@ibl.bm .