Gold Cup, OD and team racing—Sailing news from the U.S. and beyond

by David Schmidt, Sail-World USA Editor on 8 Oct 2013 If you love high-end match racing, get excited: The Argo Group Gold Cup unfurls this week in Bermuda, offering world-class best match racing competition (October 7-13). Cup and Olympic sailing legends such as Sir Ben Ainslie, Ian Percy, Francesco Bruni, Xabi Fernandez and Nick Hutton (among many other talented sailors) have all converged on this beautiful island nation to compete and to keep their match-racing skills tack-sharp.

'It is always good to keep working,' says Bruni, who served as tactician on Luna Rossa during AC34, but is serving as skipper at this regatta. 'And match racing is always going to be part of the America’s Cup, regardless of the type of boats you sail in. Obviously the last one didn’t provide a lot of opportunity for hard boat on boat match racing, but there were still some interesting moments.'

Get the full Argo Group Gold Cup report, inside this issue, and stay tuned for more on this event, as it unfurls.

In One Design news, US Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider’s Paige Railey earned a Bronze medal at the Laser Radial Worlds (October 1-7), which just wrapped up in Rizhao, China. Here, Railey stared-down a fleet of 76 others sailors to take a medal, despite a disappointing start to her regatta.

'The first race went bad[ly]. It was one of those situations where you push forward from it,' said Railey. 'After the first race, I went up to [coach] Mark [Littlejohn] and was slightly bummed. He said ‘Go for it’, and that’s what I did. I took everything we had talked about and put it together. This is the stuff we’re training for–for Rio–it will be challenging at times in the [2016] Olympic Games regatta, and it’s good to practice for those times.'

Meanwhile, in team-racing news, the U.S. Team Racing Championship just took place at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club in Newport, Rhode Island. Here, sailors competed for the George R. Hinman Trophy, which is team racing’s most prestigious trophy. After some fierce competition, top honors go to the team of 'Ladies and Gentlemen', followed by 'Tiller Towards Trouble' and 'Jet Lag'. More, inside.

Also inside, be sure to get the full download on the Tornado Worlds, the Star Worlds and the Mini Transat. And finally, don’t miss the coverage of the ISAF Sailor of the Year nominees.

May the four winds blow you safely home,