GAZI – Gazi is almost ready to welcome the 5th edition of the World University Match Racing Championship. Gazi is a municipality 6 km west of Heraklion on the north coast of Crete. Its area is 95.8 km².
The venue for the WUC will be the Pantanassa harbour in the gulf of Gazi. It is a very quite marina, small size, near the zone of the regatta, which is a great advantage. One part will be reserved for the Championship: 8 sailing boats and 4 umpire boats.
Match Racing is a completely new discipline in Crete. For this reason, the OC organized a test event seven months prior to the World University Championship, i.e. from November 20th to 23rd, 2009.
The last edition was the 2008 WUC Match Racing in Gdansk,Poland and we don’t have to forget that Sailing will be an optional sport at the 2011 Summer Universiade in Shenzhen and that for 2012, the 6th WUC Match Racing is already attributed to Vallauris, Juan Gulf, France.
For this edition, the Organizing Committee will supply J24 class rule sailing boats of equal quality at the disposal of the competitors. A draw will be made before the departure of the teams. There will be no specific women championships as the crews will be mixed. There is one exception for the Polish team, only composed by girls.The sailing crew will be composed of 4 or 5 persons. The notice of Race can be easily checked on the LOC website at http://match-racing10.edu.uoc.gr/notice/notice.html
Teams are arriving today for registration. Nine countries will participate: Italy, Singapore, Australia (2 teams), Denmark, France, United-Kingdom of Great Britain (2 teams), Ireland, Poland (2 teams), Greece (2 teams). The weather is nice with a temperature of 25°to 28°C and wind force 3 to 4 beaufort.
A CISCA meeting, held by FISU First Vice-President, Claude-Louis Gallien is organized at 7pm. General matters will be discussed, finalization of the program for tomorrow, medical aspects and all protocol matters. The CISCA is composed of the FISU CT Chair, Roland Galliot, CIC delegate Eugenio Meschi and CMI delegate Janice Harvey.
(Source: Nicole Mangelschots FISU Asst. WUC)
