In its tenth year of activity, J/70 Italian Class enjoys a full season: the J/70 Corinthian World Cup joins the J/70 Cup, which will see Alessandro Molla's Viva as defending champion. The CWC will be the first edition of an appointment which, at the beginning of June, will recall in Riva del Garda an even more crowded fleet than the record one that in 2022 joined the final leg of the circuit.
The event, assigned to Italy by the J/70 International Class, will be reserved for all Corinthian crews (therefore made up of sailors classified as non-professionals) and will be giving away some places for the eagerly awaited J/70 World Championship 2024 of Palma de Mallorca.
The choice of J/70 International Class adds a new chapter to the collaboration with J/70 Italian Class, which has been one of the most active internationally since its establishment. The numbers recorded at each event of the J/70 Cup speak for themselves, which is confirmed year after year as the most popular circuit, and by the assignment of events such as the J/70 World Championship 2017 (Porto Cervo), in which over 170 crews took part, and the J/70 European Championships in 2014 (Riva del Garda) and 2018 (Malcesine), where the entries were over 120. Without forgetting that the appointment with the J/70 European Championship will be renewed next year, with the organization of the Yacht Club Punta Ala.
The J/70 Corinthian World Cup will break into the middle of the J/70 Cup calendar, the opening stage of which is scheduled in Porto Ercole between 14 and 16 April thanks to the organization of the Circolo Nautico and Vela Argentario. For the Class it will be a return in front of the Feniglia beach, where in 2018 it was Enfant Terrible-Adria Ferries of Alberto Rossi who won the leg.
Faithful to tradition, the J/70 Cup will not fail to visit the Adriatic: the second stage (12-14 May) has in fact been entrusted to the Yacht Club Rimini, whose collaboration with the J/70 Italian Class began in 2021 , with the victory of Mauro Roversi's J-Curve, and continued in 2022, with the success of Gianfranco Noè's White Hawk.
In mid-July, a month and a half after the J/70 CWC in Riva del Garda, bows will once again be crossed for the J/70 Cup: to facilitate the participation of a large number of crews to the third event, the management of the class has focused on Malcesine and the local Fraglia Vela, absent from the calendar since 2021, when Alessandro Zampori's DAS Sailing Team was the master.
For the closing of the season, and to discover the name of the new J/70 Cup champion, we will have to wait for the third week of October, when the fleet will be on stage for the first time at the Circolo Vela Erix in Lerici where the title of Italian Champion J/70.
"Thanks to the excellent work done in terms of programming by our secretariat, led by Giulia Albuzio and Giulia Grosselli, skilled in activating new synergies and relaunching long-standing relationships, the J/70 Cup 2023 will bring welcome confirmations and some new venue. In fact, we will return to the Yacht Club Rimini, which has been collaborating with the class for some seasons and has organized two very competitive legs, at the Fraglia Vela Malcesine and at the Circolo Nautico e della Vela Argentario, where we have been missing for five years. Great is the expectation in view of the event to the Circolo Vela Erix in Lerici, chosen as the venue for the final stage, also valid as the Italian Championship: it will be the first time that the fleet will have the opportunity to sail in the Gulf of Poets. I would like to thank the yacht clubs, because a large part of the success of an event depends on them and on the availability of all their members and volunteers: as participants we enjoy the best in terms of hospitality, often ignoring how much effort is put in place to guarantee competition and fun. As always happens, during the construction phase of the season, we had to face some little problems, resolved also thanks to the collaboration between the various one design classes and the desire to do the best for the entire sailing movement. The quality of the work carried out by the J/70 Italian Class, whose working group counts on top-level professionals such as Luca Babini, Egidio Babbi and Zerogradinord, is certified not only by the numbers recorded in each event, but also by the choice of the J/70 International Class to entrust us with the organization of the J/70 Corinthian World Cup, a world premiere reserved for non-professional crews which will undoubtedly be the one design event of 2023, both in terms of prestige and entry list, and which will offer prizes Wild Card for the 2024 World Championship in Palma" explains Federico Siragna, who is preparing to celebrate his first year at the helm of the J/70 Italian Class.