Ian Williams and his GAC Pindar team-mates will be the proverbial rabbits everyone will be gunning for when the $100,000 Argo Group Gold Cup officially gets underway today.The two-time world champion and past Gold Cup winner is the current leader on this year’s World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) and with a good showing in Hamilton Harbour this week can put more distance between himself and the chasing pack.But his task won’t be easy as the King Edward VII Gold Cup will be contested for by arguably the strongest fleet assembled at a WMRT event this season.“All nine Tour Card Holders are attending so it will be another tough year,” Williams told The Royal Gazette. “The level on Tour goes up every year so we need to keep moving our game forward in order to be competitive.”The 2006 Gold Cup champion has been nothing shy of consistent on the Tour this year, winning both the Stena Match Cup Sweden and Portimao Portugal Match Cup and finishing third at the St Moritz Match Race in Switzerland and Korea Match Cup to bolster his bid for a third world championship.Williams has returned to Bermuda with a highly skilled and experienced crew and, in the absence of last year’s winner Ben Ainslie who is not back to defend his title, can be pencilled in among the pre-event favourites to lift the oldest match racing trophy for one- design yachts.He is also among the Tour Card Holders who stand to profit from a points system incorporated following the cancellation of this year’s Danish Open that could potentially shake up the WMRT championship after the Gold Cup is completed.Williams will face Canada’s Terry McLaughlin, Bermuda’s Peter Miller and Italy’s Simone Ferrarese in his opening three Group Three round robin flights.Meanwhile, others expected to mount a serious bid for Ainslie’s vacant crown include three-time Gold Cup winner Peter Gilmour (Australia), 2007 winner Mathieu Richard (France) and Torvar Mirsky (Australia).“We have a tremendous group of skippers, not only the top skippers in the world coming from 14 different countries, but we’ve also got a lot of the young up and coming skippers from Bermuda, US Virgin Islands, New Zealand, Australia and the UK that have the potential of upsetting the big boys,” commented Brian Billings, chairman of the regatta.After six stages of the 2011 WMRT there are as many as eight teams still in contention for the championship.“It’s pretty tight at the top and what makes it very exciting for the guys who are in contention for the world championship is that there’s a lot of money involved besides the glory,” Billings added.Bermuda will be represented by three teams this year to be led by skippers Blythe Walker, Lance Fraser and Miller, who is making his debut in the Gold Cup.“Blythe is the oldest chap on the Bermuda side and certainly up there as being one of the older skippers in the whole event, and so he’s got quite a bit of experience in Bermuda and sailing IODs (International One Design),” Billings said. “He came third in 2006 and could do well again because he’s sailing with an experienced crew.”