The International Soling Class will held for the third time his World championship in Brazil. The first was in Rio de Janeiro in 1978 with a victory from the Brazilians Gastão Brun, Vicente Brun and Roberto Martins. The second happened in 2004 at the Veleiros do Sul in Porto Alegre. The title was kept by the Argentineans Gustavo Warburg, Hernan Celedoni and Maximo Smith. Again now in February of 2010 the VDS comes back to host the Worlds with racing days from February 7 to 12.

The Soling Class has a huge tradition in the worldwide yachting competition. The boat project thought around 1965 in Norway gained afterwards lots of friends around the worlds. Nnowadays the boat is present in 41 countries and in 6 continents, mostly active in three of them and with 25 countries permanent members in the Class association. The Soling boat was Olympic in between 1972 and 2000. Torben Grael, Daniel Adler and Ronaldo Senft won for Brasil a silver medal in the Los Angeles games in 1984.
The Soling class was also who introduced the Match Race in the Olympic games. A worldwide format known due to the America’s cup, where there is competition only in between two boats in the race course. It was trought the Soling that many sailors ended up specialists in this competition format. The most famous event at that point was the Match Race World Cup – the Infanta Cristina Trophy that was held annually from 1995 until 2000 in Spain with a the participation of the best crews in Soling at the world.

Nowadays the Veleiros do Sul counts with most of the Brazilian national fleet. The crews are constant present in some international events like the world championship. During 2007 they had an excellent performance finishing first with George Nehm, Marcos Pinto Ribeiro and Lucio Pinto Ribeiro at the worlds in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Cícero Hartmann, Flávio Quevedo and André Renard who finished second.

The Soling class has also some interesting facts, like being one of the only three handed team allowing to mix young sailors with experienced ones with more than 40, mixing complete different weights.

World Championships obtained by Brasil

1978 (Brasil) - Gastão Brun, Vicente Brun e Roberto Martins
1981 (Itália) – Gastão Brun, Vicente Brun e Steven Bakker
2007 (Argentina) - George Nehm, Marcos Pinto Ribeiro e Lucio Pinto Ribeiro

2010 Soling World Championship link: www.solingworlds.com