Young sailors prepare for RYA Eric Twiname Team Racing 

Annual Youth and Junior Eric Twiname Team Racing at Oxford SC

Some 288 Youth (under 19) and Junior (under 16) sailors will be battling it out for RYA Eric Twiname Team Racing glory over the weekend (17-18 October) at Oxford Sailing Club.

The annual two day event will welcome teams from the Junior and Youth Class Associations, Zones, clubs, schools and individual teams who will commence battle in the two separate events. The RYA ET Team Racing Championships is one of the highlights of the RYA’s racing calendar providing the nation’s young sailors with the opportunity to develop their skills whilst working as a team.

Twenty-eight Youth teams are entered to race, defending champions team ‘420’ have gone their separate ways with Alex and Robbie King now part of  ‘Youth Firefly’ while Joe Burns, Dan Whiteley, James Clementson and Matt Viney forming the majority of team ‘Penarth YC’, both will be teams to watch as the event develops.

They will face tough competition from Sevenoaks School who finished second in the 2014 Youth event. Head of Sailing at Sevenoaks School, Andy Cornah, a World Champion Team Racer himself, has high expectations for both his teams: “Last year we were second in the Youth and fourth in the Junior. Two thirds of our teams are the same so they should do well and I expect them both to be in the top four.”

With only six weeks of training under their belts they have been concentrating on the basics: “Usually the first thing back after school holidays is to try and get them back into racing, a lot of sailors won’t have done that much over the summer so we ease them back into it. We then move onto some simple training exercises and then gradually focus on the team race specifics.

“For the RS Feva kids, a lot of them haven’t done much team racing so it’s introducing team racing to them for the first time bit by bit.”

It’s not just Sevenoaks who haven’t experienced team racing, for many of the younger sailors this is their first taste and Cornah thinks it’s a great introduction: “In this event you get lots of teams in each division and for a lot of them, it’s RYA squads and club teams that have never done team racing before. They all come away from the event loving it and the parents seem to think it’s a great thing. It’s a good event.”

2014 Junior Champions team ‘Gingernut and Assorted Biscuits’ have graduated to the Youth division creating an opportunity for one of the 20 teams entered to take the Junior crown. Racing in RS Fevas, the field is open with schools, Class Associations, sailing clubs and the ‘Mighty Morphing Flower Arrangers’ all hoping to take a race win or two from the competition.

Both Youth and Junior events will sail the HLS League on Saturday.  On Sunday, the Junior event will split into four equal leagues, for the Youth event, the top 12 are being split into two gold leagues, the remainder will sail another HLS League.

See a full list of entries and the results on the event website and follow the British Youth Sailing Team on Facebook and @RYAYouthRacing on Twitter.