Three 2024 semi-finalists including defending Champ Cole Tapper (AUS) return for 2025 Governor's Cup

Governor's Cup winners – crew Hamish Vass and Jack Frewin with Cole Tapper (AUS) - 57th Governor's Cup © Tom Walker

Governor's Cup will be July 29 - August 3; World's match race skippers under 23 invited to file a Request for Invitation.

Defending champion Cole Tapper (AUS) leads a field of early invitees for the 58th Governor's Cup International Youth Match Racing Championship and will be joined by three of four of his semi-final opponents from 2024. The fourth was runner-up and two time "GovCup" winner and world youth champion Jeffrey Petersen (USA) who lost last year to Tapper in a tight 3-2 battle, but who has now aged out of the under-23 regatta.

2024 3rd place finisher Justin Callahan (USA) will again be joined by his petit final opponent, Josh Hyde (NZL), who has had a spectacular year in youth match racing since last year, winning, among other regattas, the under-25 Hardy Cup in Australia. Tapper and Hyde are number 1 and 2 in the current World Sailing Youth Open Rankings, and Tapper is #8 in the Open (no-age limit) Rankings.

Also invited are Michael Kirkman (USA), the U.S. Intercollegiate Match Racing Champion, and Morgan Pinckney (USA), a two-time GovCup podium finisher and #8 in the youth rankings. "It is likely that Balboa Yacht Club's Siena Nichols will also receive an invitation," said GovCup Steering Committee Chair and two-time winner Andy Rose. "She is only 16 but her skills are those of a much more experienced match racer. Whether this year, or one or more of the five more years she is eligible, I fully expect her to be the second female winner of the GovCup." Gisele Camet (USA) was the first female winner, in 1991.

The Governor's Cup, presented by Terry Causey and the Call of the Sea Foundation, is the oldest youth (under 23 years old) match racing championship in the world. It includes among its alumni many of the finest sailors in the world including two-time America's Cup winner James Spithill (AUS) and multiple Congressional Cup and World Match Racing Tour champ Taylor Canfield (USA).

The Governor's Cup Selection Committee will choose the remaining skippers based on Requests for Invitation ("RFI") received by April 11, 2025. RFI forms and other information are on the event website www.govcupracing.com under "Race Documents."

The twelfth and final invitee will be the winner of June's U.S. Youth Match Racing Championship for the Rose Cup which this year, on its fifteenth anniversary, returns to its founding Balboa Yacht Club June 25-29. "It should be quite a summer for youth match racing at BYC,," said Christine Gribben, a Balboa YC director and Chair of both events.