President of the Barbados Sailing Association Penny McIntyre as she speaks about the upcoming event.
Fireball Barbados to set sail in April
2/26/2010
By Michael Phillips
FOR the very first time in history the Fireball Worlds franchise is coming to our shores. The Barbados Tourism Authority Fireball Barbados Worlds 2010 will be held in Barbados from April 24th to may 7th. This international dinghy racing event was officially launched in a press conference yesterday at the Barbados Yacht Club.
The competition will see over 150 teams from 17 countries, some as far away as South Africa, the Shetland Island and Ireland, vying to overthrow last year’s winning team of Chips Howarth and Vyv Townend of Australia. At present four teams from Barbados are registered for an opportunity to take down the Australian pair and have been in training for the last month.
The fireball class of dinghy is a 16 foot, two person vessel with high performance capacity and is suited for various conditions. This year’s events will be sailed under the auspices of the Barbados Sailing Association which is the governing body for sailing in Barbados. President of the organisation, Penny McIntyre has billed it as the largest small yacht competition ever in Barbados.
Minister of Tourism, The Honourable Richard Sealy, this is yet another opportunity for Barbados to showcase its developing sports tourism product and its potential as a tremendous venue for yachting. Minister Sealy was part of the delegation last year to La Rochelle, last year’s host, to promote the event here in Barbados and hopes the staging serves as an impetus to encourage the larger classes to consider Barbados as a venue. He also gave special thanks to the sponsors for their assistance considering the present economic situation and had this to say “These are tough times in terms of what is happening economically and unfortunately you will find that in order to cut costs one of the line items that normally suffers is in the area of public outreach and sponsorship. We really owe a debt of gratitude to those entities that have come to the table”.
Sponsors for the event include title sponsor Barbados Tourism Authority, Digicel, Virgin Atlantic Mount Gay Distilleries, Banks Breweries and Williams Industries Inc.
