Optimist, Open Skiff, Youth & Olympic Sailing Blog

Excerpt of International Teams page of CODA website The Canadian Optimist class published a list of some 42 sailors eligible to attend IODA events in 2019. The so called “International Teams” list produced on October 11, draws from the unique qualifier organized by the class - the Canadian nationals - held on August 17-23 2018 in British Columbia. Canada, unlike most countries, is sending sailors to many IODA events, including the Worlds, Europeans, North Americans, South Americans and the Asian and Oceanian championships. Some sailors will attend, one, two, three or even four such events. Others will just attend one or two. And yes, there are sailors, including very good ones, not attending any IODA events - for example because parents don’t want to get involved into the complexities of preparing for such events, or because of the high costs of participation. With the recent change in the directorship of the organization, there may be a bit of a change of tone. Indeed, the COD...

2018 Ora Cup Ora Podium, with Marco Gradoni (ITA, 2017 & 2018 World Champion, Richard Shulteis (Malta, 4th at 2018 Worlds) and Alex Demurtas (ITA, 2018 European Champion) UPDATED ON DEC 11 2018 WITH DATES OF ALL THE LISTED EVENTS  There are many regattas for Optimist sailors. It’s not obvious to figure out which ones to attend. Of course, there are the official IODA regattas, but there are issues with those. Not only do they require selection by the national optimist class but they are typically expensive for parents, require lots of coordination among parents to form a national team, and they are sometimes less competitive than non-IODA events. A most obvious example is the European championships, where sailors qualified for the Worlds are not allowed to attend. That's an Optimist class regulation: the best 5 Optimist sailors in each European country are not allowed to compete for the European title! So that obviously reduces the overall level of those IODA European...

Here are a few notes following the Ora Cup Ora, organized by Circolo Vela Arco - one of those big Summer high level European Optimist regattas that just concluded on Garda Lake, Italy. - this is a world level regatta, attended by many of the very best Optimist sailors in the world, including World Champion Marco Gradoni and European Champion Alex Demurtas, both from Italy. - there was a large number of participants - 540, while nearly 600 registered - in two fleets Juniors (U16) and Cadetti (U12). There were 167 sailors in the cadetti fleet, and 382 sailors in the juniors fleet. - there were big fleets from a number of countries: Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, Monaco, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Malta, etc. - many teams were travelling without parents, in vans for 8 to 10 sailors, and large trailers for 8 to 10 hulls and a coach boat - unlike with IODA regattas, the registration fees are kept very affordable: 60 euros for 3 days regatta - acc...