World Match Racing Tour

The World Match Racing Tour, the successor to the Swedish Match Tour, and the International Sailing Federation, ISAF, the world governing body for the sport of sailing, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), marking the first phase in the achievement of a long-term partnership to create a new World Match Racing Tour.

The World Match Racing Tour features 10 of the premier ISAF-graded match-racing events. Competitors earn points towards the championship based on their finishing results at the individual events.

The partnership wil enable the ISAF to grant World Match Racing Tour "ISAF Special Event" status. Other changes include the introduction of the title of ISAF Match Racing World Champion from 2007 for the overall winner of the World Match racing Tour.

The Tour season will grow match racing on a worldwide platform. The World Match Racing Tour was founded in 2000 as the Swedish Match Tour, and is sailing’s longest running professional series offering prize money. The Tour has awarded $1.15 million in prize money and a BMW 545i Touring (valued at $85,000) in six completed seasons.

Currently in the midst of its seventh racing season, the World Tour (succesor to the Swedish Match Tour) last month conducted its 50th event at the Monsoon Cup in Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia. Other ISAF-graded events on the World Tour include the inaugural Brazil Sailing Cup (Angra dos Reis, Brazil), ACI H1 Match Race Cup (Split, Croatia), Match Race Germany (Langenargen, Germany), Toscana Elba Cup (Porto Azzurro, Elba Island, Italy), Swedish Match Cup (Marstrand, Sweden), Portugal Match Cup (Cascais, Portugal), Danish Open (Skovshoved, Denmark) and St. Moritz Match Race (St. Moritz, Switzerland).

Widely recognised as a preparatory event for the Americas Cup The World Match Racing Tour is conducted with many of its existing competitors, teams and strategies. 

Race Logistics:

• A match race can be described as a duel between two identically-matched boats with a winner - and a loser.
• When two boats are on the starting line, the race is called match racing. Match racing has its own set of rules, which are slightly different from the regular racing rules that create very close, aggressive competition in which collisions are certainly not rare.
• Match racing also has on-the-water judging, with umpires doling out "instant justice" on the water.
• Match racing is tremendously exciting to participate in. And, unlike watching other sailing competitions, match racing can be thrilling to watch. Before the start, the boats vie for control, circling each other and trying to wipe each other off on spectator boats in an elaborate game of cat and mouse.
• The match racing course resembles an oval shape with the Start/Finish line close to shore.
• The course consists of a starting line, between two marks, laid at right angles to the wind's direction.
• The boats begin from the starting line and sail upwind to the first mark to be rounded to the starboard (right side). The spinnakers are set, and the duel continues downwind to the second mark that is laid in close proximity to the starting line 100-meters further up the course.
• The boats round the marks 2-3 times before the winner crosses the Finish line.

History:

Swedish Match was no stranger to the sport of sailing. The company got its feet wet in 1994 when it sponsored the Swedish Match Cup, a new match-racing regatta hosted in Marstrand, Sweden.

Boasting a sizeable prize purse and a unique venue in Marstrand, where spectators can view the racing from rocky shoreside perches looking down on the racecourse, the event instantly became a must-attend regatta on the match-race circuit.

During its 11th year, the event was recognized as the largest on the professional sailing series, regularly attracting more than 150,000 spectators.

To unite it's international divisions Swedish Match took on a global focus and entered a team into the 1997/98 Whitbread Round The World race.  The event covered 31,600 miles and visited seven countries, many where Swedish Match featured prominently in local markets. The Swedish Match Global Team achieved Third place overall in that race.

After the success of the Whitbread Race entry, the company wanted to continue its international focus. Recognizing the increased interest worldwide in the America’s Cup (a match-racing event where two boats race one-on-one), Swedish Match seized the opportunity to provide sailors around the world with a consistent unified series of events that occur on a regular schedule: the Swedish Match Tour.

The Swedish Match Tour was created in 1999, as a joint venture between Swedish Match, the World Match Racing Association and Force10 Marketing, a sports marketing agency based in Rowayton, Conn.

The tour consolidated the world’s top match-racing events under a single name and provided the world’s leading sailors and up-and-coming stars with a fair, even forum to hone and showcase their skills. The tie-in with the ISAF and the re-branding to World Match Racing Tour in 2000 brought a new global platform to a professional sailing series which will visit nine countries in 2006/07 with substantial television coverage and prize money.

Boats:

In an effort to address the World Match Tour's strong tie to the America's Cup as well as increase opportunities for growth from an event perspective, the Tour commissioned the development of a custom built match racing yacht that could be transported around the world, offering both a competitive consistency to all World Match Tour events as well as creating opportunities to stage regattas in locations that may not possess a suitable fleet of racing yachts.

From the pre-World War II era IOD to the modern Swedish Match 40, a variety of boats test the crews' range of skill on the World Match Tour.

The Swedish Match Cup in Marstrand July 2003 was not only once again the final event on the world's premier professional sailing series, but also the location of Swedish Match Tour's proudest announcement: the unveiling of the Swedish Match 40, a new custom built match racing yacht designed for the World Match Tour.

Designed by Swedish sailing legend Pelle Petterson, with project management provided by Sailnet, a Scandinavian marketing and management company, a prototype of the SM 40 was launched in Marstrand and made available for viewing and sailing throughout the week by media, sailors and other interested parties.

After relying on event-supplied yachts for the first four years of the Swedish Match Tour, a desire arose to design and build an exclusive fleet of boats for the World Match Tour that could provide a consistent quality of yacht from event-to-event. The boat also needed be of a "grand-prix" nature, utilizing the latest technology and designed in way that would continue the World Match Tour tradition of holding the racing on short courses in shore-side venues, allowing spectators to see, first-hand, sailing at the highest level.

Additionally, recognizing the value the America's Cup teams place on competing on the World Match Racing Tour, the goal was also to design a boat similar in look and performance to the America's Cup class yachts, but portable enough to fit in a 40-foot container allowing a fleet of SM40s to be shipped to each of the events on the World Match Tour.

Specifications:

• Length 12 m 39' 4"
• Beam 2.30 m 7' 6"
• Draft 2.10 m 6' 10"
• Displacement 3.8 tons 3.8 tons
• Mainsail 40 m2 430 ft2
• Genoa 32 m2 244 ft2
• Foresail 20 m2 215 ft2
• Spinnaker 100 m2 1076 ft2

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