James Spithill will attempt to win his second consecutive King Edward VII Gold Cup when the Bermuda Gold Cup, Stage Four of the 2006-7 World Match Racing Tour, takes place on Hamilton Harbour, next month.

Spithill, the recent recipient of the Australian Yachting 2006 Male Sailor of the Year award, headlines a field of 16 crews that will compete in the $50,000 regatta sailed in 33-foot IOD sloops.

?We?re very happy with the field that we?ve assembled for this year?s Gold Cup,? said Andrew Cox, Commodore of the host Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. ?We?re also delighted to be part of the World Match Racing Tour again.?

The oldest one-design match-racing event in the world, the Bermuda Gold Cup rejoins the World Tour after a one year absence. This year?s event marks the seventh time in eight seasons that the Gold Cup is part of a World Tour schedule. Also, it is the 58th match-race competition for the cup, first presented to the legendary C. Sherman Hoyt in 1907 at a regatta marking the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Virginia Colony.

The World Match Racing Tour schedule began in July and counts 15 events through December 2007. The winner will be recognised as the ISAF Match Racing World Champion.

Spithill, the 27-year-old helmsman of Italy?s Luna Rossa Challenge for the America?s Cup, won last year?s Gold Cup with a 3-2 victory over the event?s leading winner, Russell Coutts. Spithill faced a 2-1 deficit in the final but rallied for a 3-2 victory. For Spithill the win was a measure of revenge. He lost the 2004 championship to Coutts.

The format for this year?s Gold Cup is slightly different from past years. The 16 crews will be split into two groups of eight. Each group is scheduled to sail a single round robin with the top four advancing to the quarter-finals.

The quarter-finals, semi-finals and final are knockout rounds, with skippers paired against each other in series of three or five races.

Besides Spithill, the line up features three other skippers who finished in the top eight last year, including Staffan Lindberg (FIN), 3rd overall, Mathieu Richard (FRA), 6th overall and recent winner of the ISAF Nations Cup Open Championship, and Ian Williams (GBR), 8th overall.

Other entrants aiming for the $25,000 winner?s check are Jes Gram-Hansen (DEN), a helmsman for the Mascalzone Latino ? Capitalia Team and runner-up at the Gold Cup in 2004, and Scott Dickson (NZL), who placed fourth at the 2004 event and is entered for the sixth consecutive year.

After the first three stages of the 2006-?07 World Tour season Gram-Hansen is second overall in the world championship standings and Lindberg is eighth.

Continuing a long tradition, there are two strong Bermudian entrants in the form of Blythe Walker, who won the 2006 Bermuda National Match Racing Championship, and Paula Lewin, Bermuda?s four-time Female Athlete of the Year who recently placed fifth in the women?s championship at the Nations Cup.

Lewin is the only woman skipper to advance through the qualifying rounds of the Gold Cup, which she did in 1999, 2002 and 2003. In 2002 Lewin finished fifth overall, the best finish for a female skipper in the 56-year history of the Gold Cup.