SAILING: The annual showdown between Ireland's third level colleges got underway at Killaloe yesterday when 22 teams began the National Sailing Intervarsities. The winners go forward to the international championships later this year.

Yesterday's opening series was sailed in fresh conditions that resulted in numerous incidents and widespread, mostly minor damage. By late afternoon, the breeze had become fickle and 87 of the 100 scheduled races of the preliminary round robin had been completed with the balance to be raced this morning.

Following this stage, the fleet will be split into Gold, Silver and Bronze divisions though already, the strongest teams have qualified. Two visiting teams are also competing, Cardiff University and a squad from the British University Sailing Association (BUSA). Both top their groups.

The BUSA squad are drawn from a variety of colleges and include the top six team racers from their national pool of talent. Of the domestic Irish fleet, several Olympic candidates are amongst the contenders with the Dublin Business School fielding Laser hopefuls Peter O'Leary and Timothy Goodbody.

Also through to the Gold fleet are the first teams of the University of Limerick and UCD. The latter included former Mirror World Champion Peter Bayly and Conor Clancy, who was third in Laser 2 Europeans. UCD defeated Trinity who included Marty Maloney, Phil O'Reilly and Brian Reilly though these are expected to easily qualify this morning.

The highly fancied Cork Institute of Technology had to pull their team during the day after a crew member injured an arm.

Meanwhile in the aftermath of the Irish Sailing Association's leaked invitation to invite winning America's Cup-winner Alinghi's owner, Ernesto Bertarelli, to stage the 2007 event in Ireland, Senator Joe O'Toole was the latest national figure to join the campaign to bring the "auld mug" to Ireland when he raised the matter in Seanad Éireann this week. he cited Dingle as an ideal location and noted the estimated billion dollar revenue generated for Auckland over the past six months.