Hunting scenes off Fremantle: Season opener for the World Match Racing Tour 2016
If the upper houses of a sport all develop in the same direction, then there is a double danger in addition to the advantages: that of confusion and that of monotony. The ongoing catamaran wave has the professional sailing sport more and more under control: Whether America's Cup, Extreme Sailing Series, GC 32 Racing Tour or now the World Match Racing Tour - it seems that competitive sailing only works at major events and professional series on an international level still on two hulls. In addition to the spectator appeal of the racing two-hulls, the organizers are also attracted by the opportunity to position themselves in the same boat segment as the America's Cup as a "test field" and "talent-finding pool", as a kind of little cup sister to well-known teams and their offspring -Crews or cup-hungry stars to win. The question arises, however, whether the upper limit of the number of attractive, but very similar formats of world-class events on catamarans is not slowly being exceeded and whether they can exist commercially in this form in the long term.
Start of the World Match Racing Tour 2016 in front of Fremantle: How the six-time world champion Ian Williams and his team prevailed on the new catamarans in the opening regatt of the greatly shortened WMRT regatta
The fact that the World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) is one of the last international circuits to switch to two runners and fight for the crown of the dueling sailors in a double-hulled way brought the sailors and fans to the first Kat final at the WMRT last weekend. The opening regatta for the greatly shortened 2016 WMRT season. After the difficult introduction of the catamarans into the world tour of dueling sailors, the new tour program is initially only made up of five regattas in four countries. The showdown of strength at the beginning was surprisingly won by a monohull specialist in the form of the Briton Ian WIlliams, who has seldom been able to shine on catamaran missions that have so far only been sporadic. The six-time world champion has now apparently successfully switched to the M32 catamarans and defeated the team of the Swedish veteran Hans Wallén in the finals off Fremantle in Australia.
The World Match Racing Tour advertises with the same attributes that other organizers of catamaran series use: "Stadium sailing", "Stunted maneuvers" and "Spectacular capsizing" characterize the event. While the Extreme Sailing Series recently expanded its fleet race character to include match race elements, the World Match Racing Tour is now adding duels, but also some fleet race elements. Observers perceived the Australian opener as exciting, not as a classic match race. The World Sailing Association is already discussing whether this series will actually still crown the duel sailing world champion or whether it may have to be rethought.
The six-time world champion and his team GAC Pindar won ahead of Fremantle for $ 33,000
Champion Williams is not worried about that at the moment. "I'll be fully focused on these boats and the tour in the months ahead," said Williams. You can't blame the smart British ex-lawyer: He has his eyes fixed on the million dollar prize money. The new Swedish tour operators have pumped a lot of money into the realignment of the World Match Racing Tour, are also using the series to advertise the M32 boats they have built and to sell them in larger numbers. The individual regatta organizers should help bear the high operating costs. Initially, however, only a few could be won over.
"You don't have to take part in every maneuver straight away," said Eberhard Magg, who, together with his partners Harald Thierer and Bernd Buck, organizes Germany's most famous duel sailing regatt on Lake Constance once a year under the umbrella of the Match Center Germany. The Match Race Germany waived its traditional tour status this year because the rights and event fees demanded by the organizers are not acceptable. "We prefer to observe the development from the coaching bench," says Magg, "we are responsible for Germany's most traditional match race and have decided against tour membership because the operators' demands are far from reality and can hardly be financed by any organizer worldwide are." The radical switch to catamarans is also criticized by the German and other organizers, which has sidelined the existing fleets of many organizers of WMRT regattas without a transition phase.
Despite all the sporting excitement at the beginning, the WMRT organizers owed a few standards of comparable series to their own claim to regattas presented in a first-class sporting and media way. There is no tracking system, as is known from the America's Cup or the Bundesliga and with the help of which the viewer has an overview of the current positions of the starters at all times. Eberhard Magg, co-founder of the first German America's Cup campaign and sports director of Match Race Germany, said: "We will monitor the development of the tour very closely and then decide how to position ourselves." The Match Race Germany will take place off Langenargen from May 12th to 16th as an independent regatt outside the World Match Racing Tour, as usual, on monohull boats.
