UK sailing news, 2020 Olympics, Sail-World toolbar and more

by Jedda Murphy and the Sail-World.com Team on 15 Feb 2013 Welcome to the second Sail-World UK newsletter this week. Due to popular demand and the sheer number of UK and world sailing stories we are covering Sail-World is increasing its newsletter frequency to twice weekly.

The 18 footers World Championship 2013, the seven race JJ Gillian Trophy series, starts tomorrow on Sydney Harbour in Australia with a big fleet of 31 boats, including the biggest contingent of Kiwis in many years, as well as two British crews. There have been two British winners of this event, in 1999 Tim Robinson and in 2004 Rob Greenhalgh.

Team Pica, Jamie Mears, Tristan Hutt and Stewart Mears from Stone SC have won a number of UK and European titles but this is their first time on the Australian scene. The second UK entry Jarrod Simpson on helm has sailed in two 18 footers Worlds, This time with his British boat The Black Dog in this event has an experienced Australian crew of Euan McNicol (2009 JJ Gilitinan Winner) and Grant Rollerson.

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Sail-World's coverage of this year's event, will be more detailed than ever, we will have four video cameras on one boat in the fleet, just to add another perspective.

Sail-World will also be deck to provide coverage of the RYA Dinghy Show 2013 which is set to take place at Alexander Palace, London, over the weekend of 2nd and 3rd March. With over 200 exhibitors there is lots in store for everyone. Quite some interest in the RYA Club of the Year awards with the finalist announced.

Sailing seems set for 2020 Olympics at least with the Executive Board (EB) of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have included it in the 25 sports it will propose to the 125th IOC Session for approval as the core sports for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.

A shock for wresting, one of the original Olympic sports excluded from the core, it will now join seven shortlisted sports – baseball-softball, karate, roller sports, sport climbing, squash, wakeboarding and wushu - vying for inclusion in the 2020 Olympic programme as an additional sport. If Sailing does not pay attention to the need to engage with the Olympic audiences this could be its fate some time down the course.

On an international note Emirates Team NZ's first day of sailing in their new second generation AC72, Aotearoa, on a light summer's day on the Hauraki Gulf.

Before she sailed Grant Dalton said 'The temptation today is just to go out and send it straight away and get her up on the foils. Although that is the temptation, that is not the way we are going to run it today.

We are going to systematically load the boat, and take a few days to get to that stage. But it is really tempting to go out and send it and send a message. But we aren't going to do that today.'

So what do we have on the Day One Video? Foiling Kiwis of course!! As Oracle USA’s Aussie skipper Jimmy Spithill would say, ‘Onya Dalts!!’

Sail-World New Zealand's Richard Gladwell is keeping a close eye on events in Auckland. Today we have more pix of the Kiwi team on the water.

Looking from here in the UK, it does seem that the gap in readiness between the New Zealanders and the other two teams is growing rather than shrinking.

And finally Sail-World has launched a customised tool bar aimed at serious sailors in the UK. It provides breaking news, Twitter and RSS feeds, Facebook link, enables fast searches and has a handy drop down for a whole range of Sail-world key elements. So to keep up with what is happening on the UK sailing scene and internationally install this toolbar now.

Install the Sail-World UK toolbar here.