2025 Team Racing World Championship draws on variety of skill & experience
by New York Yacht Club 28 May 16:33 PDT
May 28 - June 1, 2025
Team Racing World Championship © Paul Todd / OUTSIDEIMAGES.COM
Last time Pete Levesque raced in a Team Racing World Championship was 2011, in Schull, Ireland, when he was a skipper on Team Extreme representing the New York Yacht Club. He was racing against the West Kirby Hawks who won that event and are one of 12 teams ready to battle in the 2025 Team Racing World Championship taking place on Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island this week, organized by the New York Yacht Club in conjunction with World Sailing.
"It's been a while, and I've mostly been racing keelboats since then, but this is home field for us in the Sonars so in some ways it is just another weekend here in Newport, but in other ways there is very good competition in the fleet with the whole 2v2 twist on it," says Levesque. "In other team racing, particularly in Sonars, we have a team racing advantage because we have a very deep crew pool here in New York. In some ways the 2-on-2 format with no kites eliminates some of that advantage that their skill set brings. There are a lot of really good team racers here and a lot of really good keelboat sailors and match racers. I don't think anybody is going to run away with it, but a lot of people will have a bunch of fun, interesting, exciting races, and that's what I'm looking forward to."
Team racing is a niche of the sport that pits against each other two teams sailing two to four boats of the same class, with races typically 15 minutes or less. The winning team is decided by combining the results of each team's boats. Superior boat handling, quick thinking and a strong understanding of the rules are required for success. In scholastic and collegiate competition in the United States, the preferred format is 3-on-3 using lightweight two-person dinghies. This was also the format for each of the previous world championships. The 2025 Team Racing World Championship will be sailed 2-on-2 using 23-foot Sonar keelboats. The 2-on-2 format has won fans due in part to its simplicity. The team of the last boat to cross the finish line in any race loses that race.
Registration and practice racing took place on Wednesday and the vibe at Harbour Court was one of keen anticipation as sailors representing 10 countries including Argentina, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Great Britain, Greece, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States prepared for the week ahead. Each team consists of between six and eight sailors; a minimum of two women and two men are required on each team. Teams with solid team racing experience made it clear that they are here to win races, while those with less knowledge of this complex racing game are just happy to be a part of this exciting regatta which returns to international competition for the first time since 2015.
See the team rosters here.
Johan Backman Berg, representing the Gamla Stans Yacht Sa¨llskap of Sweden, which has been racing together for some five years, noted that preparation for his team has been two-fold; learning about the boat and improving their team racing skills.
"Sonars are a fairly new boat to us—most of us come from dinghies at various levels—but we are now using a Sonar locally in Sweden to train on," says Backman Berg. "We have been competing in local competitions as part of our training and we're looking forward to a lot of things here, especially just being here in Newport as it's a legendary venue for sailing, but we're also here to fight as well. We want to go at it, we want to try our best, we want to see if we can finish towards the top. Team racing is fun—we like the quick decisions, the team aspect, and even the fact that you sometime need to go backwards in a course—that is so strange for a lot of sailors! But having to do that—to go back and support your teammate, come up with strategies which sometimes you need to figure out in the heat of the moment—I think that is fantastic, it's such an intense way to sail."
As always, the Kiwis will be a team to watch. While they confess to not having much team racing experience to draw from, their combined match racing backgrounds will be quite transferable to 2v2 team racing. Practicing today, Jordan Stevenson, a skipper with the team representing the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, got a taste for what's coming down the pipe this week as they sailed the course in several short practice races.
"It was fun and chaotic out there; we raced against a team from Great Britain who were really good," Stevenson said. "We were looking to get the simple stuff down, set a stable foundation, get the boat-handling right, get the comms sorted out and then go from there. We absolutely have our work cut out for us and each race is going to be full-on; I don't think we'll get a break.
We're coming in with no expectations and hoping that we can learn as we go, we will be quite dynamic and adaptable and hope to just get better as the week goes on. I feel like a lot of the teams competing have done a lot of team racing but maybe they'll come in expecting to be very good and maybe be less open-minded, so that could be an advantage for us."
The mix of international teams competing is indicative of the interest that team racing is gathering worldwide and while the teams from the United States and Great Britain who have traditionally dominated the team racing scene are expected to do well, there is much enthusiasm among the newer teams.
20-year-old Malika Bellomi from Lake Garda, sailing on the Italian Team, grew up in a sailing family and started in the sport when she was eight years old. "This is my first time to the United States and my first time team racing so it is a wonderful experience for me. Our practice session today was great, the conditions were perfect; it wasn't too windy, the water was flat and perfect for trying out some new things before racing starts. We are grateful to the Italian Sailing Federation for giving us this opportunity and we will be doing our best."
The Argentinian team mostly have a background growing up in the Opti class and other dinghy sailing. While they've competed together in keel boats, team racing is very new to this team, notes skipper Francisco (Fran) Bellocchio, skipper.
"This is a first experience for us as a team and team racing is very new to us but we're very happy to be here. We were very careful with our team selection and we have a great team of people from different places in Argentina. We were able to train for a few days in New York to learn the boat better—last weekend was our first experience in the Sonar so we'll see how it goes. We're mostly looking forward to having a good time out there, but we are very competitive like everyone else; we look forward to seeing how we will do in the first races and then we'll try to come up with a strategy after we can compare ourselves against the other teams."
The youngest crew racing this week is 16-year-old Trystan Hocking, sailing with the Bermuda Sailing Association team, most of whom have team racing skills thanks to college sailing and boarding school sailing experience, noted crew Julia Lines, which they were able to put to the test on the water today.
"We've all had to leave the Island to go to school at some point so I think that we fell into team racing that way," Lines said. "A few of us have sailed Sonars before, they are new to some others on the team but they're not too complicated to figure out and our first practice session was fun with great breeze. A few other teams were out there so we were able to see their speed and maneuvers. We're here to have fun, learn hopefully win quite a few races, and represent Bermuda well."
Racing in the 2025 Team Racing World Championship will start mid-morning on Thursday, May 29, and run through the late afternoon each day, weather permitting. Conditions are lining up to be sporty for the first two days of racing, with a southeasterly flow on Thursday bringing possible wet conditions with windspeeds in the teens to 20 knots, while Friday looks to bring a strong southwesterly breeze in the teens to 20 knots.