Saturday 8 January 2011

Perth 2011 World Sailing Championships Preview



by Richard Palfreyman

The world’s top sailors have now been officially invited to take part in the Perth2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships to be sailed off Fremantle in December.

The International Sailing Federation, ISAF, and Perth 2011 today published the Notice of Race for the event which is expected to attract more than 1300 athletes from 80 nations competing across ten Olympic class events.

The Notice of Race states the key conditions for the championships, detailing the rules, regulations, entry and qualification guidelines, format, scoring, schedule, venue and courses.

Perth2011 Event Director John Longley said today that elite international sailors were coming to Perth with their eyes focussed on winning a place to compete in next year’s London Olympic Games.

As well as hosting the battle for World Championship glory, Perth 2011 is the principal qualification regatta to decide 75% of the national places for the sailing events at the London 2012 Olympic Games.

“The sailing world will be focussed on Perth this December,” Mr Longley said. “With the support of the Federal and State Governments and our many sponsors, we will put Perth, Western Australia and Australia in the international spotlight. Overseas sailors are relishing the thought of competing in the ideal conditions off Fremantle.”

For the first time in 2012, sailing will introduce women’s match racing at the Olympic Games and the discipline will join the nine fleet racing events to contest their world championship in Perth.

All fleet racing events in this year’s Worlds will sail an opening series before the top ten in each event contest a double-points Medal Race to decide the final positions. The Medal Races have a target time of approximately 30 minutes and will take place close to the shore to allow spectators to get close to the action.

The action will be covered by the Perth 2011 media team and broadcast live by Sunset+Vine/APP which was appointed host broadcaster by ISAF in July 2010.

The Notice of Race can be viewed at www.sailing.org/isaf-worlds or on the Perth2011 website at http://www.perth2011.com/press/view/latestnews/227/

The qualification system can be viewed online or downloaded from http://www.sailing.org/tools/documents/2011ISAFWorldsQualificationSystem-[8271].pdf

Video preview for Perth 2011



Perth 2011