The Star Sailors League Global Ranking has seen today the exceptional addition of the International Laser Class with about 10,000 skippers in it, bringing the numbers of sailors ranked today to a stellar 33,000!! (20,000 skippers and 13,000 crew)
Laser is undoubtedly the most widespread dinghy all over the world, possibly for being ready to go, really one design, easy to move around, affordable, with well organized regatta and very popular. That is why we ranked 4,100 Laser Standard and 6,500 Laser Radial sailors.
Star, Snipe, Finn, 49er, 49er FX, Nacra 17, Ok Dinghy, 420 and 470, Melges 24, Moth, J70 and now the Laser and Laser Radial, the project is taking shape and soon, with all of the main classes in the SSL Ranking, it will be possible to know who is the best sailor this week by just clicking on the SSL Website.
The number of sailors in the SSL Ranking is meant to grow bigger and bigger every week, and to double up by 2020, with all of the Olympic Classes, the main big boat series, the most popular dinghies, the America’s Cup, the offshore races and the evergreen: all of them will be in the SSL Ranking by next year!
The Star Sailors League is following the ‘Integration Criteria’, an agreement between the class and the SSL Board.
Each class will have different points allocated to them based on the group they belong to. There are three groups:
Group 1 – Olympic classes – getting 100% of the points allocated to the competition.
Group 2 – World Sailing Classes (Snipe, Dragon, Moth, Optimist, Farr40, M32, J70, …) – getting 85% of the points allocated to the competition.
Group 3 – Non World Sailing Classes (Surprise, Corsaire, …) – getting 75% of the points allocated to the competition.
And how many points for each competition? Regattas are divided into seven categories, plus one for events that don’t belong to any of the seven.
Category 1 – Major events – SSL4000: Olympic Games, SSL Finals, America’s Cup
Category 2 – Worlds – SSL2500: World Championship, SSL Grand Slam
Category 3 – Continental – SSL1000: Continental Championship
Category 4 – International – SSL500: World Cup Series, Match Racing Tour, 52 Super Series, Xtreme Sailing Series, …
Category 5 – National – SSL250: National Championship
Category 6 – Regional – SSL100
Category 7 – Local – SSL10
Non Open Events (Events reserved to U23, Junior, Master, only women, only men– getting 65% of the points allocated to the competition based on the points given to its group (1, 2 or 3).
To make an example based on the new addition. The winner of the Snipe World Championship will earn 85% (because the Class is from Group 2) of 2,500 points (because the event is a Category 2), so the winner will be added 2,125 SSL Points
Every sailor’s best six results of the past two years will be counted.
The rules are the same applied to Star regattas, the first Class ever ranked: the competition points are registered at 100% for 52 weeks, from the 53rd week and up until the 104th week from the end of the competition the SSL Points are recorded at 50% of their initial value; from the 105th week the points are not counting for the ranking any more. The 6th best results are used for the ranking and all SSL10 regattas (local).
The addition of the Laser Sailors didn’t affect the top 10 of the SSL Global Ranking, but on the Laser podium we can find Tom Burton (AUS), at the 2016 SSL Finals, with Matthew Wearn (AUS) and Nick Thompson (GBR), in the Olympic Laser Radial the first one is Anne-Marie Rindom (DEN), with Marit Bouwmeester (NED) and Emma Plasschaert (BEL), on the Laser Radial … and on the Laser Radial Open the first one is Simon De Gendt (GER), followed by Kiril Tereshkin (RUS) and Zac West (GBR).
SSL Press Officer since 2015