IOM Worlds at London Datchet, May 15-23rd 2026. Runners and Riders. Part 1 The runners
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A competitor said to me last weekend, “I learnt more in 3 months of radio sailing than 30 years racing a dinghy”. There will be nowhere better to extend your learning of racing than by watching the best in the world demonstrating their skills in a week-long championship in a stadium like setting. We will have a full entry of 84 boats for the event next year with many reserves and all visitors will be welcome.
If you are a dinghy or keelboat sailor looking to enter the world of radio sailing with an International One Metre (IOM) and would like to find the best boat to race, this article is for you. It sets out a design history of the class and what the likely winning designs will be next year. If you are already a one metre sailor, then the article gives you the background behind the leading designs.
The IOM Worlds web site
Sailing is a bit like horse racing where any moderately serious punter will be well-versed in basic information about breeding lines, recent fortunes of stables, and so on. In sailing the runners are the hull design, the stables are the countries and the training programs they put together to get the best out of their team. The riders are the skippers. In part 2 later next month, we will look at the riders as the entry process will be completed.
Radio sailing boats are technical marvels and every bit as complex as a full-size dinghies or yachts. The fin and rudder is carbon and the hull is either epoxy and glass or 3d printed. Whilst the rig is held up with two shrouds and supporting spreaders, back stay and fractional jib, there are 21 potential variables in setting the rig to keep the owner’s grey cells busy. Inside the boat there is a winch and a rudder servo with a radio receiver. With the latest radio transmitters, you have options to program your transmitter which if used correctly can potentially lead to an increase in speed. Once you have everything put together, all you have to do, is learn to sail it remotely using 2 sticks to control the sheeting angle and the rudder. It all sounds so easy until you try.
There are two critical things to know about IOM boats, or the runners as I referred to above. You need a detailed knowledge of setting up rigs, but more important is the design of hull underneath the rig.
Pre 2011 designs
It is no surprise that the top sailors in the IOM class who dominate international competition are designers who have been involved in the sport for decades. Up to 2011 the class was dominated by home builders and a limited range of production boats. New designs were produced to unlock the potential of the class but no one cracked the code. The picture below coutesy of the MYA and Graham Bantock shows some of the variety of designs that existed prior to that time. All ideas were tested from the narrow vertical sided Scharming to the wide TS2. Each design had its own optimal wind condition. The British were the centre of the world when it came to IOM racing in the early days and competitors from the UK dominated International competitions well into this century.
Courtesy of an article by Graham Bantock fromd the MYA Acquant magazine
I am not the expert on design but Graham Bantock is. Graham has sailed IOM’s as well as many other radio classes, is a past world champion, has a bulging International trophy cabinet and has supplied sails, hulls and fittings through his business, Sailsetc, to the growing radio sailing market. He wrote a number of articles for various magazines and 5 of which he recently updated for the Model Yachting Association and I provide links to them below. Here you will find detailed descriptions on past designs and their development up to 2014.
Here is a Link to a Graham Bantock article on the IOM designs up to the start of the Britpop era in a Seahorse magazine
There is more detailed information on the MYA web site in the Acquant back issues. Look for “Graham Bantock – Development of the IOM class 1-5”. While you are there, take a look at the many other useful Acquant articles.
The Domination of the Britpop
In 2010, a new design called the Britpop was developed by Brad Gibson and ominously finished second in its first Europeans. In the following year, the 3 prototype Britpop’s finished first, second and third in the World Championships at West Kirby. The design went into production (in the UK, Spain, S America) and dominated the class for several years. So successful was the design, it is still seen near the top of leader boards today including the latest European championships earlier this year.
With the passing of time, as other designers began to understand the magic of the Britpop lines, other hull shapes emerged which exploited particular wind bands and began to challenge the dominance of the Britpop.
The Croatian influence
Zvonko Jelecik (four-time world’s winner) from Croatia developed a one stop shop for all things IOM (Sailboat RC) with successful IOM designs and moulded sails. His initial design the K2 became a world beater in his hands and won two world championships. He was a previous world champion in a Pikanto. Not only could one buy a fully assembled boat with all the extras but an endless supply of sails and spares. In 2022 following defeat by another relatively recent design (the Venti) in light weather, he set about developing a boat that would be dominant in light to medium conditions and launched a radical design call the VISS with an aerodeck raised up to get the booms of the main and jib close to the deck. It was a brave move but a successful one. The boat had a curious look with high topsides but proved to be a winner taking the 2023 European’s and 2024 World’s. But while Zvonko was hard at work and winning, others launched designs to challenge his dominance.
The Italian Job
The Venti was introduced around 2019 and designed by Giovanni Ceccarelli, an Italian firm that designs beautiful yachts and applies the same methodologies used for full-size boats to their radio controlled design the Venti. The boat looks fast with clean lines, similar to one of her bigger sisters in the design stable and is known for its strong performance in a wide range of wind and wave conditions and was firmly placed on the map when Olivier Cohen steered his Venti powered by BG Sails to the World championship in 2022 and the design is often seen at the front of fleets. The boat proved popular and you can see many examples in local clubs as well as international regattas. The design narrowly missed winning the European championships this year being beaten by the Zvonko designed K2.
A Venti just won the 2025 North American Championships with a VISS second and a V12 third
In a land down under
On the other side of the world, in New Zealand, Ian Vickers captured the market in the Southern Hemisphere with his V series and is now on the latest iteration, the V12. The design is known for its dominance in windy choppy weather. Ian missed winning the world championship in 2024 by a point where the positions weren’t decided until the end of a stunning last race.
2024 Worlds
At the worlds in 2024, the top positions were all taken by designs beginning with V. In the top ten there were 4 Venti’s, 4 VISS and 2 V12’s. In the following Europeans, the top ten were filled by 4 Venti, 4 VISS, a Britpop and a Kantun. Anyone new to the class wanted to get hold of one of these designs, but the challenge was getting hold of a boat. The latest boats were being passed from father to son, or within clubs, moved on from owner to owner. On the darker side, people have been known to sell on a brand new, still unboxed hull at its cost price plus a couple of hundred pounds premium to sailors anxious to beat that 18 month queue.
There was always the option to buy an older suitable design and pimp it up, if you could identify and find one. You could update the fin, lower the rig but the trouble was, if you were new to the game, you had no idea where to start or what to pimp. The tight supply of boats was holding the growth of the class back but that was about to change with the coming of new technology and materials robust enough to survive the rigour of racing.
Enter 3D printing Technology
The development of robust 3d printed materials transformed boat availability. Juan Egea in Spain developed a competitive 3D printed boat called the Alioth and he himself steered the boat to top results in a European championship and Spanish nationals. What was unique about his offer was that Juan sells the print files under licence with design drawings so anyone anywhere in the world could print a boat and rig it to designer’s specification. Suddenly in a market where it was near impossible to get hold of a boat, if you had access to a 3d printer you could rapidly print and build your own for a reasonable budget, reinventing the concept of home building IOM’s.
Other designs followed, notably the Proteus from the pen (CAD system) of Craig Richards, creating significant further interest and activity across the globe and Craig who had designed his own boats in glass epoxy was frustrated by the time it took to reshape a mould and lay up a new boat. With 3d printing he was able to print a design, sail it at the weekend, note modifications, return to his CAD/CAM system that night, modify the design and have a new boat printed and ready to sail the following weekend. 20 plus iterations later, he achieved a design he could release to the market. The technology is a designer’s dream.
The 3d printed boat is robust and competitive for club racing to international competition. In the US the Alioth design was even re-produced in epoxy/glass, and a few were produced called the Polaris and proved to be extremely competitive.
Other designs launched in the recent timeframe are the ORCA designed by Darren Abdilla of Malta and built by Rood Ars of ARS-Composites in Thailand, the Aeon, the latest design from the drawing board of Frank Russell and the Genesis design created by Jeff Byerley which recently won the Jomlien Regatta in Thailand controlled by 12 year old Lui Hongru. Of course there were other designs released but these are the key ones known to the author.
The Chinese are coming
One new entry coming to the iOM world is the Joysway’s One Meter, a design called MINT which could be launched soon. The prototype blow moulded boats look strong, with excellent rigs and sails and creative fittings. Like their DF95 and DF65, boat in a box concept that has sold globally in their tens of thousands, if launched, they will help to further unlock the perennial problem of boat supply to those new to the Radio sailing world.
Looking forward
As designers tried to surpass the Britpop, hull shape has become relatively homogenised perhaps apart from the VISS which has taken the aerodeck to another level? The looks shared by the likes of the Venti, Alioth, V series, and others, owe much to the Britpop design which for many years and still is to an extent the holy grail of hull shape. Each new design tries to be an improvement on that shape, something which performs equally well in light and heavy air, flat and choppy water. Despite all the effort to surpass it, the Britpop still delivers great results in any competition.
The last few years have seen significant change and activity within the class and it will be fascinating to see what impact it has, on the leader board at next year’s world championship. At the moment the top boat will either be one of the designs beginning with V or the Britpop. Can anyone break the deadlock and will a 3D printed boat or new design surprise us all.
Whatever happens, it provides plenty of material for discussion after racing in club events over a beer or coffee after racing. We club members might not sail like champions, but we can talk and dream like champions.
Next up in December, the riders.
If you missed the first article in this series on what Dinghy and keel boat sailors could learn from radio sailing, the link is below:
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