Past Argo Group Gold Cup winners Mathieu Richard, Ben Ainslie and Torvar Mirsky have been granted a second bite at the cherry to compete in this year’s Alpari World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) event.The trio were excluded from this year’s list of WMRT Card Holders who were automatically invited to compete in the 62nd staging of match racing for the King Edward VII Gold Cup in Hamilton Harbour.However, the Gold Cup selection committee have included the three skippers among the 13 additional invitations sent out to a selection of top sailors in the ISAF Match Race ‘Open’ Rankings, past participants in the Gold Cup and up-and-coming skippers on the match racing scene.Three slots for the Argo Group Gold Cup are to be selected from qualifying events such as the Knickerbocker Cup and the Detroit Cup in the United States and the Bermuda National Match Race Championship.The deadline for acceptance by the initial group consisting of WMRT Card Holders expires May 14. All Tour Card Holder’s entry in the event will not be guaranteed following this date as the Gold Cup selection committee will consider additional ranked skippers and other applicants to fill all available slots.Tour Card Holders for 2012 include England’s Ian Williams, Sweden’s Johnie Berntsson and Bjorn Hansen, Italy’s Simone Ferrarese, Australia’s Peter Gilmour and Keith Swinton, New Zealand’s Laurie Jury and Phil Robertson and France’s Pierre-Antoine Morvan.Williams is the reigning WMRT champion and also a past Gold Cup winner as are Berntsson and Gilmour.Mirksy became the first Australian skipper to win the $100,000 Argo Group Gold Cup in nearly a decade after beating Berntsson in last year’s best-of-five final. He also won the St Moritz Match Race in Switzerland competing with his Wave Muscat teammates and placed fourth on the WMRT last year.The 2012 Argo Group Gold Cup will be held October 2 -7.The event is the 8th and penultimate stage of the WMRT where teams compete in the International One Design (IODs) for the ISAF Match Racing World Championship.