Youth, women set for Cup prime time

The youth and women’s America’s Cup regattas have been handed prime schedules for Barcelona 2024 with a mix of fleet and pressurecooker match-racing on the menu.

The youth final will be a single one-off race run on the same day as the showpiece America’s Cup challenger final on October 2, 2024. It will be raced between the final flights of the two Cup syndicates vying to take on defenders Team New Zealand.

The women have been handed an even bigger stage with their single match race final held two weeks later, a date scheduled for two America’s Cup Match races. Again, the women will race between Cup flights with the eyes of the world on them.

The youth and America’s Cup will start on September 19, 2024 and the women’s America’s Cup on October 3.

Both series begin with a week of practice before the fleets are split into two with the confirmed

America’s Cup teams competing in one group and all the invited yacht clubs from around the world competing in another.

Once racing begins in earnest, each group will race a qualifying series of fleet races, consisting of three races per day over three days to produce the top three podium teams from each group.

Those teams will then move forward to a final series of four fleet races on one day to produce the top two teams who will advance on to the respective youth and women’s America’s Cup single matches.

Teams are limited to the syndicates confirmed for the 37th America’s Cup – so far that involves Team New Zealand, Luna Rossa (Italy), Team UK, American Magic and Alinghi (Switzerland). The rest of the fleet will be made up of seven teams representing yacht clubs from other countries with one team per country in each event.

They will race in the new AC40, a half-scale, one-design version of the full America’s Cup, with a crew of four sailors.

The youth teams can be mixed gender.