ASAF Asian Sailing CUP Series launched

by Jason Lim 5 Apr 2014 17:51 BST 21 March 2014

ASAF held their Executive meeting in Singapore at the ASAF Secretariat on 21st March 2014. The launch of the ASAF CUP and ASAF YOUTH CUP series was announced.

When reviewing the Championships events in 2014 - 15, the Executive Committee expressed sincere thanks to all those MNA's and clubs who have come forward to host one of the ASAF Cup and ASAF Youth Cup events. They expressed particular satisfaction with the outcome of the first ever ASAF Cup which will be competed in minimum of the eight Olympic Classes and ASAF Youth Cup which will be competed in Optimist, Laser 4.7 (under 17), Laser Radial (under 19), RS One (under 19) and other optional classes.

The series will have annual events as follows for the first 3 years:

ASAF Cup:

1. ASAF Invitational Cup 1: Enoshima, Japan from 19-22 June 2014
2. ASAF invitational Cup 2: Shanghai, China from 23-26th October 2014
3. ASAF Cup3: Mussanah, Oman from 10-14th March 2015

ASAF Youth Cup:

1. ASAF Youth Cup 1: Chennai, India from 16-22nd December 2014
2. ASAF Youth Cup 2: Hong Kong from 14-17th February 2015
3. ASAF Youth Cup 3: Singapore from 17-21 March 2015
4. ASAF Youth Cup 4: Abu Dhabi from 8-11 April 2015

The Events Committee of the ASAF will liaise with event organisers for issuance of Notice of Race for all events by end May 2014. Sailors from around the world are invited to participate at the ASAF Cup and ASAF Youth Cup series and the Executive are confident that in future these will be one of the best competed events by the best sailors not only from across Asia but also the World. ASAF President commented: "ASAF is delighted to launch this series of events. This will enable Asian Sailors to compete with each other on regular basis to raise overall standard of sailing in Asia. This series will also enable new technical officials to be trained and qualified in Asia in the coming years."

In another significant development, ASAF Executive approved the first partnership for ASAF with LaserPerformance during the meeting. This will be an initial 3 year partnership where LaserPerformance will support ASAF Administration. The funding will allow ASAF to grow sailing in Asia, and run the organization more efficiently.

Jason Lim, Secretary General of ASAF said, "This is a great step forward for ASAF as it will allow us for the first time to fund important administrative activities in Asia to develop sailing. With the start of the ASAF CUP and ASAF YOUTH CUP, this is a very timely help received by us from LaserPerformance and we thank them for this."

Bahman Kia, Director, LaserPerformance commented, "We believe Asia has a tremendous potential to grow the sport of Sailing. ASAF has been making fast progress in the last one year towards growing the sport of sailing and we are hopeful that the new administration of ASAF will be able to use this funding to grow the sport even further. We in LaserPerformance believe that youth sailing is very important for the future of our sport and LaserPerformance will continue to support and dedicate its efforts towards it in the future and its partnership with ASAF."

Other matters discussed included the marketing and promotion of ASAF, events and services to sailing in Asia, plus matters to do with sponsorship support. Another important topic for the meeting was the Annual General Assembly of ASAF, which takes place on 21-22 September 2014 in Incheon, S Korea.

www.asiansailing.org