The format for this year’s Argo Group Gold Cup remains up in the air.With the Alpari World Match Racing Tour sanctioned regatta due to begin in Hamilton Harbour a week from today, event organisers have yet to determine which format teams will use in this year’s match racing spectacle in the International One Design (IOD) classic racing sloop.Last week The Royal Gazette revealed that event organisers were considering revising the format to accommodate a lower than anticipated fleet brought on by the ongoing economic downturn.Argo Group Gold Cup organisers had hoped to have as many as 24 teams represented this year. But due to the current economic climate that number has dwindled.“The reasons why some of the skippers aren’t coming is more economic driven this year,” race chairman Brian Billings said. “Just like the rest of the world they are suffering too.”Billings said that in some cases teams have been ruled out for reasons varying from lack of crew to America’s Cup commitments.He revealed that a proposed revised format for this year’s Gold Cup is currently being considered by his fellow committee members.“There’s a proposal put forth which we are looking at which we think we’ve pretty much accepted . . . that we are going to change the format,” he said. “It’s still pretty much a work in progress.”Billings declined to comment when asked about the nature of the proposed format.However, it is understood that the format could see teams in two groups compete in a round-robin with the eventual top four from each group automatically advancing to the quarter-finals.In recent years the Gold Cup format has seen teams in three groups compete in a round-robin with the top two from each group automatically advancing to the quarter-finals. The third and fourth teams from each group would then compete in a round-robin repechage with the top two completing the eight quarter-finalists.The event, stage seven of the Alpari World Match Racing Tour, will be held from October 2-7 and hosted by Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (RBYC).Representing Bermuda this year are local skippers Blythe Walker and Lance Fraser.Meanwhile, there will be no shortage of talent at next week’s Renaissance Re Junior Gold Cup.The three-day regatta will feature 16 foreign sailors, 13 of whom are national champions in their respective countries, to compete against Bermuda’s top Optimist sailors.Among the overseas contingent is two-time New Zealand National Champion Leonard Takahashi-Fry and reigning Semana del Mar Plata and Argentina National Champion Tomas Di Luciano.Local sailors expected to be thick in contention include brother and sister duo Ceci and Mikey Wollman, Benn Smith, Chase Cooper and Peter Dill.The Wollmans are fresh off a successful summer of overseas competition which saw Ceci win the CORK Regatta and Mikey the Canadian National Championships.Smith has also had a summer to remember after claiming top honours in his age group and finishing third overall at the 2012 Sunfish Youth and Junior Championships.To honour a decade of support by sponsors Renaissance Reinsurance, the final day of racing in Hamilton Harbour will be contested for the Renaissance Re Junior Gold Cup 10th Anniversary Trophy.This year’s top local sailor will be awarded the new Dick Kempe Trophy honouring the memory and legacy of the late Royal Bermuda Yacht Club (RBYC) commodore and well-respected international juror.n Local skipper Alec Cutler will rub shoulders with some of the world’s elite at the Melges 32 World Championships that gets underway today in Newport, Rhode Island, USA.The RBYC sailor will be among a record fleet of 34 boats that includes current European Champion Vincenzo Onorato of Italy.