Three-times America's Cup winning skipper Russell Coutts will go head-to-head in Dubai next month with Danish star Jes Gram-Hansen in the first of a new series of international sailing events planned for the Emirate.
The Dubai Match Race Challenge marks the debut of the Russell Coutts 44 racing boat which will give rise to a new one design fleet racing World Championship event in 2007.
The high-performance composite-built RC44 is being constructed to stringent CouttsJustin design specifications by Dubai-based manufacturers V1 Advanced Composite Technologies and Pauger Carbon from Budapest.
Its competitive launch in the Dubai Match Race Challenge on March 16-17 reinforces the relationship between V1 and the event organisers, Dubai International Marine Club, who are working together to establish Dubai as a leading venue for match racing.
The Dubai Match Race Challenge will feature six 20-minute rounds of close combat match racing on a virtual square course set between Dubai International Marine Club, its beachside Le Meridian resort hotel and the Palm Jumeirah breakwater.
Skippering a crew featuring Swiss Julien di Biase, Croatian Stipe Vitaljic, Italian Massimo Sirena and Danes Chresten Plinius and Peter Poulsen, Coutts will be aiming to add to his impressive haul of major career successes in the Dubai Match Race Challenge.
Gram-Hansen, one of the rising stars of match racing, will be supported by fellow-Dane Rasmus Kostner, Malta's experienced sailor Chris Dougall, and Italy's Alberto Barovier, Michele Paoletti and Vasco Vascotti, who has won more world sailing titles than any other Italian.
Dougall, 33, of Sliema, is one of Malta's few professional sailors who last year was signed up by Vincenzo Onorato's America's Cup Challenge Team - Mascalzone Latino.
Dougall won the Rolex Middle Sea Race in 2001 on board Strait Dealer and sailed most of 2004 on Neville Crichton's world famous maxi Alfa Romeo.
Ahead of the Dubai Match Race Challenge, it has already been confirmed that a new, one design class fleet racing RC44 World Championship will be staged in Dubai from March 11-18, 2007.
"This new event will be broadcast live on TV in the Middle East with a worldwide audience. It will be one of our most prestigious events of the year," said Saeed Hareb, Managing Director of DIMC.
Glittering career
Coutts first came under the international spotlight by capturing the ISAF World Youth Championship in 1981, and three years later won a gold medal in the Finn class at the Los Angeles Olympics.
His three America's Cup victories as skipper in 1995, 2000 and 2003 with a 14-0 winning record, makes him the most successful America's Cup helmsman. He has twice been the World Sailor of the Year.
Gram-Hansen has made a name for himself on the Swedish Match Tour, finishing third overall in 2001-02 and 2002-03.
Dubai is staging its second high-profile match racing event inside three months. Introduced last month, the Dubai Match Race saw eight teams competing aboard another high-performance racer - the V1/Lutra-30 Sport Boat which will also be used for April's ISAF Nations Cup qualifier in Dubai.
The series was an outstanding success, with Germany beating India in a closely contested final witnessed by Goran Petersson, president of the ISAF.
Petersson described the setting for the race series, which will be the same for next month's Dubai Match Race Challenge, as 'the closest I've seen to a stadium for sailing'.