The start gun for the opening races, to be held off the harbour, 25km north of Copenhagen, will be on Sunday 23 August, culminating in Medal Races for the men's and women's fleets on Saturday 29 August.

A fiercesome line-up is expected. In the men's sail division, Skandia Team GBR's Nic Asher and Elliot Willis return to defend their title, won at Sail Melbourne just last year by a slender 0.8 points from Portugal's Álvaro Marinho and Miguel Nunes. The race pair were also World sail Champions in the race class in 2006. "We're in pretty good shape, we've had a fairly good year this far," said Asher. "We had a bit of a late start, but after a little rest we've been building up slowly towards it. We did Hyeres, SPA and Kiel and we've done quite a lot of training down in Weymouth."

The sail duo have just recently been to Rungsted for a week's training. For that the weather was a bit light, however Asher realizes any race conditions are possible. "It looks like it will be a pretty tight race: Flat water, not a lot of speed differentials, so it will be a close race."

In the men's race fleet 99 boats are already entered from 29 countries, from afar afield as Australia, New Zealand and Japan, to smaller nations such as Belarus, indicating once again the egalitarian nature of the 470; an affordable boat developed to entice every nation into Olympic sailing. The largest sail entry is from Italy, fielding 10 boats, closely followed by Team GBR on nine, then France and Spain, both with eight. The Danish hosts have five.

The men's race line-up, features crew from all the medaling teams at last year's Beijing Olympic Games, interestingly all sailing at this 2009 World Sail Championship with different crew: Australian gold medallist Malcolm Page has a new helm in the form of Mathew Belcher; silver medallist, Team GBR's Nick Rogers now has Pom Green as crew; Nicolas Charbonnier, who returned to France with bronze last year is now sailing with Baptiste Meyer.

In the women's race class, 57 teams are signed up, from 23 nations. Among them, the US Sailing Team Alphagraphics' 2008 World Sail Champions are returning to defend their title, but, compared to Asher and Willis, Erin Maxwell and Isabelle Kinsolving are less bullish about their opportunity. Like the male 2008 World Sail Champions they didn't get to represent the USA in Beijing and so have taken some time off.

"Isabelle and I haven't done much sailing since the Worlds Race in Melbourne last year, which was over a year and a half ago," says Maxwell. "Since that point weve both gotten married and I have been working full-time and Isabelle has been going to law school. So we don't have huge expectations for defending our world sail title. There are a lot of new sail teams coming up the ranks that will be good this week and a lot of returning veterans, so, in reality we expect to be a bit off the sail pace.

Hopefully our experience will help support and enable us to hang in there to be competitive. Its not impossible for us to secure in the top three, however its a long shot for sure. We're just looking forward to having some great racing and being back in the sail boat competing against our friends in the race fleet." As to the Beijing Olympic medallists in the women's race fleet, the Australia duo of Elise Rechichi and Tessa Parkinson will be competing, however like Maxwell and Kinsolving, they have had some time off and this will be their first major race since the Olympic Games.

Dutch silver medallist Lobke Berkhout returns to compete as well, but with a new helm, Lisa Westerhof taking over from Marcelien De Koning. The 2009 470 World Championship is one of a number of high end profile sailing races taking place in Denmark this summer as part of wider festival of different sports, called Denmark's Year of Sport. To do their utmost to ensure that their sail events are held to the highest possible degree of standards, the Danish Sailing Association is also working with the support of the insurance company CODAN (part of Sun Alliance Group), to provide TracTrac tracking during the Laser Radial Europeans, Finn Gold Cup, EUROSAF Match Racing Europeans and 470 World Championship.

The Danish Sailing Association has purchased 150 state-of-the-art GPS tracking devices, allowing the races to be followed in real time over the Internet.