News Follow the Action at the Europeans with the IODA APP

Follow the Action at the Europeans with the IODA APP

The 2020 Optimist European Championship has officially opened in Sonderborg, Denmark, The event will be hosted by the Sonderborg Yacht Club from July 30th to August 6th.

Follow all the action and get up-to-date news, tracking, results and media of the 257 sailors from 43 Nations that have registered for the championship on the IODA APP.  Download it for free today from the Apple Store or Google Play.

The Europeans has always been a unique IODA Championship in which boys and girls compete in separate fleets and we crown two European Champions at the end of the 5 days of Fleet Racing.   

This year we have entries of 145 boys and 112 girls – that’s 44% girls! – a whopping increase from 40% in 2019.  If we keep going at this rate, we will soon meet our goal of a European Championship with a 50/50 gender balance!

Denmark has played a significant role in the development of the Optimist Dinghy.   

It was 60 years ago that the Optimist Pram starting morphing into the Optimist Dinghy of today.  Denmark played a huge role in the transformation of the boat and growth of the class by refining all the dimensions of the original boat and growing fleets in various countries around the world.

In the 1960’s Optimist growth and innovation started to take shape and in 1965 the International Optimist Class Association was born.  The founding father was Denmark’s Viggo Jacobsen, who was the IODA President from 1962 to 1981.    We now have a Trophy named in his honour as the top nation at the Optimist World Championship.

The first world championship took place 60 years ago and at that time the results were completely dominated by sailors from the big fleets in Denmark and Sweden. In 1964, Denmark hosted the 3rd world championship and produced 3 World Champions during the early years. The Europeans did not start until much later in 1983.

This is the second time that Denmark has hosted the Optimist European Championship.  The first was in 1992 in Svendborg, just a 2 hrs drive east of Sonderborg, literally next door to the Winner factory in Faaborg.

To visit the European Microsite on your computer, go here.

We look forward to watching the Europeans unfold over the next 8 days and the crowning of each of the  2022 European Champions.