This year’s Argo Group Gold Cup promises to be one of the best ever, according to the event’s title sponsor.

The World Match Racing Tour event will feature seven of the world’s top-ten match race skippers, America’s Cup racing syndicates Artemis Racing and SoftBank Team Japan, as well three former winners in Johnie Berntsson, the defending champion, Taylor Canfield and Ian Williams who is the world match racing champion.

“There is a new organising team in place this year at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and we have the added attraction of several of the Americas Cup sailors competing, so we think this year’s event will be taken to a whole new level,” Mark Watson III, the president and CEO of Argo Group, said.

“It will be a real challenge for some of the America’s Cup sailors to go from the foiling catamarans to the heavy displacement, slow-to-manoeuvre International One Design yachts. It is a testament to the original designer of the IOD, the Norwegian Bjarne Aas, that in multiple IOD fleets around the world young sailors are still racing a 1935 design.

“Argo’s support of the Argo Group Gold Cup goes hand in hand with a desire for all the young people in Bermuda to get a taste for the enduring appeal of sailing on all kinds of vessels.”

This is the eighth year that the local insurance company has supported the King Edward VII Gold Cup, the oldest trophy in the world for competition involving one-design yachts.

“At a time when the sport of match racing is undergoing change at unprecedented speed with ever faster yachts, it is particularly appropriate that a company like Argo continues to maintain its support,” Watson, who this year sailed across the Atlantic on the winning yacht in the Trans-Atlantic Race, added.“Through sailing we find out what our strengths and weaknesses are, we meet all sorts of people from all walks of life and we get an instant lesson in the value of working in teams.

“This is something that is enshrined in Argo’s core values and something we are very proud to be helping to open up to Bermuda, whether by our support of this event or by the Argo Foundation’s support of local community endeavours such as the Bermuda Sloop Foundation, the Sea Cadets and the Ocean Academy at BIOS.”