With three weeks and one World Match Racing Tour event to go, the Argo Group Gold Cup looks like it will be the race of champions.

Sailors are certainly not looking past this week's Danish Open, but competition for the 102 year-old King Edward VII Gold Cup is always hot; and the 2009 skippers will battle to the end to get their name etched on the golden prize beside those of the world's top match race sailors.

The top eight teams on the World Tour will be in Bermuda October 6-11 to test their skill in the classic International One Design sailboats used for the Argo Group Gold Cup. They will be joined by last year's Gold Cup champion Johnie Berntsson and fifteen other up-and-coming match race skippers.

"The historic story about the Gold Cup event," said defending champ Berntsson, "is something that the other events on the World Match Racing Tour can not come close to.

"Not many other sailing events at all and not many other worldwide sports events in general can compare with the Gold Cup tradition."

Mathieu Richard, winner in 2007, put it this way. "Bermuda is very unique place and this makes for a special atmosphere during the week of competition. That's a very special event, that I really do love."

Winner of the St Mortiz Match Race, Adam Minoprio (NZL, ETNZ/BlackMatch) tops the World tour rankings. With 86 points, he is twelve points ahead of Torvar Mirsky (AUS, Mirsky Racing Team) and another six points ahead of Mathieu Richard (FRA, French Match Racing Team) and two more ahead of Ian Williams (GBR, Team Pindar) and two more ahead of Peter Gilmour (AUS, YANMAR Racing).

These top five World Tour teams will all be in Denmark and Bermuda before moving on to the final tour championship event, The Monsoon Cup, sailed December 1-6 in Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia.

Richard, Williams and Gilmour have all won the King Edward VII Gold Cup before. Minoprio was runner-up in 2008. Mirsky was out of the money last year, not making the cut for one of the top eight positions.

Of the initial twenty-four teams, sixteen teams are eliminated in the first three days of racing leaving the top eight teams to battle for a finals slot and a shot at the $50,000 first place prize.

The second through eighth place teams divide the rest of the $100,000 purse.

The Argo Group Gold Cup, sailed for the King Edward VII Gold Cup Trophy, is now the ninth stage of the World Match Racing Tour, the International Sailing Federation match racing world championship.

The Bermuda classic is the oldest match racing competition in the world for one-design yachts and the trophy presented to the winning team was originally given at the Tri-Centenary Regatta at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1907 by King Edward VII in commemoration of the 300th Anniversary of the first permanent settlement in America.

Through the years Bermuda has won the Cup twenty-one times, the United States seventeen times, New Zealand ten times, Australia five times, the United Kingdom three times, Sweden once and in 2002 Denmark claimed the King Edward VII Gold Cup for the first time.

Mathieu Richard of France became the third consecutive first-time winner of the King Edward VII Gold Cup in 2007. Last year the cup went to Sweden's Johnie Berntsson and his Berntsson Racing Team in the final 3-1 victory over Adam Minoprio's Emirates Team New Zealand/BlackMatch Team.

The Argo Group Gold Cup is the ninth out of ten events on the 2009 World Match Racing Tour's World Championship schedule.

The twenty-four invited crews include eight official "World Tour Card" teams and two winners of qualifying events, the Knickerbocker Cup and the Bermuda National Match Race Championship.

Teams will be divided into three groups of eight to sail a round robin elimination series Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The leading eight skippers go on to the quarter and semi finals, to be sailed on Friday and Saturday respectively.

The finals take place on Sunday with the top two teams in a 'first to three points' head to head battle and the losing semi finalists in a 'first to two points' Petite Final.

Between the second and third races, the course is taken over for the final race of the Renaissance Re Junior Gold Cup, which will have been underway simultaneously since Thursday in the Great Sound.