Bermuda Gold Cup & Women's Match Racing event doubleheader
by WMRT 8 Mar 2024 08:41 PST
October 28 - November 3, 2024
Celia Willison (NZL) and her EGDE Women's Match Racing Team at the 2023 Bermuda Gold Cup © Ian Roman / WMRT
The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (RBYC) is delighted to announce the 72nd edition of the Bermuda Gold Cup, a world championship stage of the World Match Racing Tour, to be held October 28 to November 3, 2024, on Hamilton Harbour.
For the first time ever, the event will also run concurrently with a new Women's World Match Racing Tour Event during the same week.
The Bermuda Gold Cup returned to the World Match Racing Tour last October and ultimately saw Sweden's Johnie Berntsson and his team raise the King Edward VII Gold Cup for the third time. Planning the dates for this year's event has considered the much anticipated 37th America's Cup, scheduled to conclude by October 20, 2024.
In a first of its kind event in Bermuda, RBYC will this year take on the challenge of running both the Bermuda Gold Cup and the new women's match racing event on the same racecourse, during the week-long spectacle. In order to host two events, the Bermuda Gold Cup format will be 10 teams in a single group. The women's event will invite 8 of the world's top female match racing teams and will be the first ever women's sailing regatta in Bermuda to also award prize money.
"We're absolutely thrilled to be able to offer this double-header of both top-level Open and Women's Match Racing on Bermuda's Hamilton Harbour," said Jon Corless, a Past Commodore of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and the chairperson of this year's Bermuda Gold Cup. "The World Match Racing Tour approached the Club about adding a women's event on the calendar and our Organising Committee looked long and hard at the logistics of being able to offer two events in one calendar year. Running the two regattas concurrently will make efficient use of race management personnel and will only add to the already exciting match racing in the Harbour."
"We are delighted RBYC has agreed to add a new Women's World Match Racing Tour event to the Bermuda Gold Cup this year" added WMRT Executive Director James Pleasance, "Our key mission for the Women's WMRT is to expand and promote opportunities for competitive women's sailing at the highest level, and having a new event in such an iconic venue like Bermuda is doing just that."
Both events will be sailed in the 33-foot International One-Design (IOD) sloop, a 1936 design with long bow and stern overhangs and a keel-hung rudder. The format for the regatta will consist of a round robin, quarterfinal, semifinal, petite final and final rounds.
The King Edward VII Trophy, awarded to the winner of the Bermuda Gold Cup, is the oldest trophy in the world for a competition involving one-design yachts. First presented in 1907 by King Edward VII at the Tri-Centenary Regatta at Jamestown, Va., honoring the 300th anniversary of the first permanent colony in America, the trophy is the only King's Cup ever to be offered for competition in the United States which could be won outright.
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