Following a similar competition format that has gained popularity in continental Europe, the Russian Sailing Federation has embarked on one of its most ambitious sailing projects ever—the creation of the Russian National Sailing League using a fleet of J/70s. The goal is to assemble the yacht clubs and sailing clubs from around Russia and C.I.S. countries and provide them a new impetus for development of sailing from youth to adult sailing programs. For 2015, the Russian Sailing League will have five regattas during the sailing season in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Konakovo, Minsk and Sochi. As part of sailing development within Russia, the SAILING Champions League has invited Russia to enter two teams for their event hosted on October 17-19 in Copenhagen, Denmark and being sailed in a fleet of 12 J/70s. 24 yacht club teams are invited, and the Russian Sailing Federation will soon introduce the sailing team members that will defend the honor of Russia in this prestigious sailing competition. The first stage of the Russian Sailing League was held September 19-21 at the YC Konakovo River Club. Ten teams were invited from across Russia and Belarus to sail on the seven J/70s. The event was broadcast “live” on the Russian Federations website and the online TV sports channel (see http://www.sportparad.ru). The sailors enjoyed a beautiful, cool weekend with relatively lights air, peaking at 8 knots from the southerly quadrants. The Upper Volga River is northwest of downtown Moscow and the YC KRC provided first-class facilities and a terrific onshore viewing point for all teams and spectators—true “stadium-style” sailing in challenging, shifty breezes. For the first day of racing, the wind started light, but built into an 8 knot breeze, making for some dynamic racing that also produced a number of protests, general recalls and somewhat overly excited skippers and crews. After every two races, the crews rotated ashore and after a quick practice for any team that had yet to sail, the races commenced again. At the end of the day, 7 of the 10 scheduled races were completed. As a result, the fleet was split into a “Gold” and “Silver” divisions. Qualifying for the Gold fleet were Yacht Russia Sailing Academy (Michael Senators), RUS-7 (Kirill Podolsky). PIRogovo (Artem Kuznetsov), Konakovo (Ivan Hinds), and SportFlot (Victor Bukin). The balance of the fleet that sailed in Silver were Teams SportTseh (Andrei Nikolayev), WFTU (Vladimir Silkin), Izobud (Sergey Kravtsov), YC St. Petersburg (Marina Larenkova), and Friendship Team (Valeryi Naskin). After an intensive day of sailing on Sunday, marked by many close starts and even tighter mark roundings, it was Michael Senators’ Yacht Russia Sailing Academy taking the inaugural win in the Russian Sailing League. Second was Kuznetsov’s crew sailing PIRogovo and third was Bukin’s crew sailing for the SportFlot Team. The J/70 league is a very innovative project for the Russian Yachting Federation; one of the features was the improvement of technologies, providing integrated TV production and the use of a GPS-tracking system for better describing the sport of sailing and educating the spectators about the regatta. In fact, for the first time in the history of Russian sailing, all races for the regatta were broadcast online on the YouTube Russian Sailing Federation channel and on the website of the Federation. GPS-tracking (http://tractrac.com) worked in all the races of the regatta, providing a computer image with position and velocity of each yacht, providing information on the race course for the commentator and the fans. Furthermore, after the race a record of all races permitted the sailors to return to the material and analyze how they performed. Photo and video shooting was done on the water and onshore, as well as using “drone helicopters” and cameras mounted on each boat. All broadcasts were also conducted online by the League’s information partner, the Russian sports portal- sportparad.ru. (Thanks for the story contribution from Catherine Zilina.) For more J/70 Russian Sailing League information, visit http://rusyf.ru/projects/3.