World's most crowded sailboat race

City of Trieste warms up for the Barcolana

The city of Trieste is gearing up for the Barcolana race, the world's biggest yacht race in terms of numbers of boats - 2000 boats are expected to take part and incredibly there is just one start on one line for all the boats...

Trieste will be in festival mode from 4-12 October when the Barcolana will set off at 10am.

Among the throng this year will be Neville Crichton's maxi Alfa Romeo, the race favourite, plus the 80ft Slovenian-built maxi MagicJena, owned by Mitia Kosmina and Mimmo Clienti.

The rules for the Barcolana haven't changed. The course remains a 16 mile long quadralateral courseof the Gulf of Trieste.

Aside from the race itself the week before will see a number of other sailing event.

The first is the Young Barcolana, for very young competitors, organised in collaboration with Unicredit Banca and Fondazione CRTrieste. The fifth edition of this sailing race will take place on 4-5 October and will bring to Trieste almost 500 sailors from all over the world, including two time world champion Croatian Filip Matita who will challenge the other young promising participants during two days of tight racing.

From 6-8 October the Uniflair Super Open Trophy will take place. This will be a clash of the titans, the maxis and the super light lake boats and those entering the Barcolana in Category 0.

From 9-11 October it’s the Fincantieri Cup’s - an invitation only race in which this year the new Solaris 36 one designs will compete. It has been brought back to its original ‘fleet-style’ race and in the past it has seen top names such as Vasco Vascotto, Lorenzo Bressani, Mitja Kosmina, Gabriele Benussi and many others, competing. This year among the new sailing teams will be the new 470 world champion Gabrio Zandonà.

On 9 October in the afternoon the Barcolana Sailing Show will open. It is a free-entrance show hosting along Trieste’s waterfront dealers from all sailing and boating sectors. From 9-12 October, with a joint coordination of Promo Sail and Fiera di Trieste, the Barcolana Sailing Show will offer sea lovers a very rich selection of products and it will be open to the public until late at night.