Match racing in St Moritz

Swedish Match announce a new event for their tour

The Swedish Match Tour is pleased to announce the addition of the St. Moritz Match Race to the Tour calendar for the 2005-’06 season. The event is scheduled for 16-21 August, 2005.

Now in its third year the St Moritz Match Race, an ISAF Grade 1 match-race regatta, is organised by the St. Moritz Sailing Club and is held on Lake St Moritz in the Engadin valley of the southeastern Swiss Alps. It features a 150,000 Swiss Franc (approx Euros 96,000) in prize money, with 36,000 Swiss Francs (approx Euros 23,000) earmarked for its champion.

“The Swedish Match Tour looks forward to competing in St. Moritz,” said Tour Director Scott MacLeod. “We’re excited to bring the Tour to a new market in Switzerland, which is also home to America’s Cup champion Team Alinghi.”

St Moritz is more renowned for its idyllic skiing conditions than as a sailing destination. It hosted the Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948.

“After becoming the home country of the America’s Cup it was our goal to develop a premium match-race event in Switzerland, to bring the best sailors up to our mountains, and to give our young sailors an opportunity to meet them,” said Christian Scherrer, Principal Race Officer of St. Moritz Match Race and a former crewmember for Alinghi. “Joining the Swedish Match Tour is a major step towards this goal. For us it has the same importance as when the Gstaad Tennis Tournament joined the ATP Tour a couple of years ago.”

Sailing at the top of the world, the St. Moritz Match Race is one of the world’s unique regattas. Held on Lake St. Moritz, which lies at an elevation of 5,624 feet (1,856 meters) above sea level, the St. Moritz Match Race might be the highest-elevation match-race regatta in the world.

The large, skiff-like boats make St. Moritz Match Race an exciting event. The Streamline 7.15 is a three-person boat, with small winglets and trapezes for the two crewmembers.

American Mark Mendleblatt won the first two editions of the St. Moritz Match Race. Last year, the US entrant in the Laser class at the Athens Olympics defeated Alinghi helmsman Peter Holmberg a past champion of the Swedish Match Tour, 3-1 in the final.

Scherrer said that the field of 12 teams in August will feature Mendleblatt returning with crewmembers Pete Spaulding of the U.S. and New Zealander Ed Smyth to defend their title. Two other entries will come from a qualifying event in Zurich, on 14-16 May that is part of the UBS Alinghi Swiss Tour, which forms the Swiss national match racing championship.

The St. Moritz Match Race is tentatively slotted as Stage 3 on the 2005-’06 calendar. The seventh season of the professional match-racing series begins with the Portugal Match Cup in Cascais, Portugal, 16-24 July, 2005.

Four events are confirmed to begin the 2005-’06 season: Portugal Match Cup, Danish Open (Copenhagen, 10-15 August), St. Moritz Match Race and the Investors Guaranty Presentation of the King Edward VII Gold Cup (Bermuda, 15-23 October).

The Swedish Match Tour is in the midst of its sixth season, and American Ed Baird leads the standings with 65 points. The season resumes on 1-8 May with Stage 5, the Toscana Elba Cup – Trofeo Locman in Porto Azzurro, Italy. The season began last July with the Portugal Match Cup.