Nineteen top international women’s match racing teams from fourteen countries are in Medemblik, The Netherlands, preparing for the Delta Lloyd Regatta, the next stop in the ISAF Sailing World Cup series.

In addition to the individual event title, the teams are competing for the overall 2010-2011 ISAF Sailing World Cup (SWC) title. The final SWC standings will be used to determine which twelve countries will be invited to the Olympic Test Event in Weymouth in August 2011. The Delta Lloyd Regatta is the fourth of six stops on the Sailing World Cup series in which women’s match racing is contested.

The Women’s Match Racing competition has seen three different winners for the three Sailing World Cup regattas so far this season. Claire Leroy (FRA) won gold at the Rolex Miami OCR, Sally Barkow (USA) finished top in Palma and Lucy Macgregor (GBR) was victorious in Hyères. None of the previous winners will feature in Medemblik, meaning there will be a fourth separate winner in Medemblik.

The Women’s Match Racing field will include five teams ranked in the top 10 in the World: Anna Tunnicliffe (USA), Renee Groeneveld (NED), Ekaterina Skudina (RUS), Katie Spithill (AUS), and Genny Tulloch (USA). In addition there will be teams from France, Spain, Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, Slovenia, Portugal, Brazil, Denmark, China, and Canada.

Racing begins on Tuesday, 24 May in Medemblik and continues through Saturday, 29 May. The nineteen teams will be divided into 2 groups to sail initial stage round robins to seed the knock-out stages for the top eight and after nearly 180 matches the champion will be crowned after the series between the final pair on Saturday.

The teams will compete in equally matched event-provided Elliott 6m keelboats - the same boats that will be used in the 2012 Olympic Sailing Competition in Weymouth, England.

For more information, please visit
www.WIMRA.org or www.deltalloydregatta.org

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This press release was prepared by the Women’s International Match Racing Association (WIMRA). WIMRA can be found at www.WIMRA.org, www.Facebook.com/WIMRA, www.twitter.com/WIMRA, and www.youtube.com/user/WIMRAMatchRace

Contact the WIMRA Press Office at PressOffice (at) wimra.org