Jim O'Toole, CEO of World Match Racing Tour, talks to Valencia Sailing

by ValenciaSailing.com on 14 Nov 2010
One month ago, the World Match Racing Tour held a press conference in London where they made a number of announcements concerning the future of the world's premiere professional sailing circuit that set the basic strategy for the ISAF World Match Racing Championship. Valencia Sailing talked to Jim O'Toole, CEO of the WMRT, about the main points of the Tour's future.

According to O'Toole, the strategy will focus on ensuring the tour continues to provide close combative head-to-head racing on monohull yachts. The WMRT will be doubling the tour's bonus prize pool to US$ 500,000 meaning sailors will compete for a total prize fund in excess of US$ 1,750,000 in 2011.

Finally, WMRT has launched a new host city bidding process, which will add six new venues by 2013. To complement the addition of new cities and to ensure the Tour embraces developing technology, submissions will be invited from international designers and boat builders to create boats for the new events joining the tour.

Valencia Sailing: The America's Cup, considered to be the pinnacle event of our sport, moved from monohulls to multihulls. The World Match Racing Tour decided not to follow suit and remain in monohulls. Why?

Jim O'Toole: I think the expression you just used, 'the pinnacle of our sport', is an important one because the America's Cup moved from the pinnacle of our discipline, which is match racing, to another space, which is catamarans.

The history of this discipline has been in monohulls and historically, the America's Cup has been raced in monohulls and therefore sat at the very pinnacle of our sport. We believe that the move to catamarans for AC34 and potentially the next couple of Cups positions them in a different place. They are seeking to support this new space with a program of regattas that feature smaller catamarans. BMW Oracle clearly believe it's about fast boats as opposed to what is the history of our discipline, that is close, one-on-one, tactics-based racing.

Valencia Sailing: Their argument is that those boats will also be able to provide the kind of racing you mention.

Jim O'Toole: I know it's their argument but we disagree with it. All our stakeholders, our teams, our media, our promoters, our fans, told us, during the consultations that we did with them, that it would be very difficult for them to recreate with big fast catamarans the one-on-one, close-combat match racing that we offer. Without any doubt, the AC45's and AC72's will be amongst the fastest sailing yachts in the planet but they run the risk of becoming a drag race. Two boats setting off, very, very fast, in opposite directions.

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