26 August 1995

West Kirby Sailing Club hosted the first ever IYRU Team Racing World Championship in Great Britain. Home success was secured by the British GBR A team, but only after a very closely fought and exciting final tussle with the Irish.

Major international team racing events had been taking place since the 1920s, and in Great Britain the Wilson Trophy had been run every year since 1949, whilst the US Nationals had been successfully held since 1981. However, until the 1990s, nobody had run an event focussed on incorporating the whole world of team racing.

After the successful launch of the ISAF Nations Cup for match racing in the early 1990s, West Kirby Sailing Club saw an opportunity to bring team racing to the world stage as well. In 1993 their proposal to the International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU) was accepted and the inaugural IYRU Team Racing Worlds were scheduled for August 1995.

The West Kirby Marine Lake was to prove an ideal venue for the Worlds, with fantastic views for spectators of the colour-coded Firefly dinghies assembled for the Championship. Twelve teams from nine different nations entered, with the hosts strongly fancied to take home the first World title.

The 1995 Worlds amply demonstrated the major virtues of the team racing discipline, namely dynamic, exciting and spectator-friendly action featuring boat handling, rules knowledge and team work of the very highest order. Thousands of spectators turned out to watch the racing, with the teams tested in a variety of conditions, with winds climbing up to well beyond 30 knots.

In fact the weather threw a major spanner in the works as 20-40 knot winds on the penultimate day led to racing being abandoned and the Race Committee being left with a major headache. Their solution was simple – by starting racing at 06:30 on the final day they managed to squeeze in all of the remaining schedule, starting with the final races in the round robin.

Great Britain A, Ireland A, Australia and USA B progressed through to the semis, with the Brits and the Irish winning through the knockout stages to take their place in the final. The British team from Spinnaker Club in Ringwood, Hampshire had won the Wilson Trophy the year before and were now clear favourites to take the World title.

However the Irish team were going to be no pushover, and held a winning combination as they passed the first mark on the M course in race 1 of the final. The Brits fought back though, and in the end were clear winners with a 1-2-6 finish.

Ireland led again at the start of race 2, but again the Brits fought back in what turned out to be a truly nail-biting finish. Going into the final leg, the race and the World title were still in the balance, and both teams tried everything to swing the pendulum in their favour. After a thrilling series of manoeuvres, it was the Brits who crossed with a 1-3-6 finish to take the World Championship title 2-0. At the end of a magnificent championship, the Great Britain A team of Steve TYLECOTE, Melanie HUGHES, Roger MORRIS, Damian BOREHAM, Grey EATON and Tasha HUGHES claimed the inaugural IYRU Team Racing World Championship title, a fantastic success for the hosts and a fantastic success for the world of team racing.

Where Are They Now

From the winning GBR A team, Steve TYLECOTE (GBR) has gone on to establish himself as a team racing legend. Following his gold medal in 1995, he scored podium finishes at three other World Championships, picking up the bronze medal in 2001 and 2005, and winning a silver in 2003. Last year he led the Spinnaker team to the silver medal at the ISAF World Sailing Games in Austria, after a fantastic final match with the USA. His Team Racing for Sailboats, published in 2002, in probably the definitive book on the discipline.

Melanie HUGHES has also gone on to further World Championship success, winning silver with TYLECOTE in 2003 and bronze in 2005. Damian BOREHAM also featured in the bronze medal winning team in New York two years ago.

ISAF In 1995

The ISAF World Sailor of the Year Awards went to Russell COUTTS (NZL), skipper of the 1995 America’s Cup winner Black Magic, and Isabelle AUTISSIER (FRA), who set a new race record in winning leg 1 of the 1994-95 BOC Challenge. Otto SCHLENZKA (GER) was awarded the ISAF Beppe Croce Trophy, for outstanding voluntary contribution to the sport of sailing.

South African and Australia triumphed in the ISAF Nations Cup in the open and women’s events respectively. 1995 was also the year in which the IYRU launched their website – www.sailing.org.