The European Cup started in 1978 and stopped back in the year 2002 due to lack of participation, which in its turn happened due to lack of funding by the national Federations. Back then, five tournaments were established, 1 in France (Marseille), 1 in Italy, 1 in Spain (Menorca), 1 in Bulgaria (Primorsco) and 1 in Yugaslavia (Mali Losinj). Later Turkey also started organizing an event in Istanbul. In 1988 Algeria also organized an event in Tipasa. The countries took part with three athletes each (one boat each) and the points of all athletes were added together to produce the classification of each one day competition. In some events the countries took part with two teams of two athletes each and the scores of those were combined to give the final result.
The global Cup points for each event were awarded to the countries as follows:
1st=16 2nd=13 3rd=11 4th=9 5th=8 6th=7 7th=6 8th=4 9th=2 Rest=0
To get into the final classification one country had at least to participate in three events. If they participated in more, they kept their 3 best performances. In some years, only 3 events were organized and the countries got classification with their 2 best performances. Apart from the competitions organizing countries, countries like Turkey, Algeria, Great Britain, Poland and Greece used to participate in some of the events but usually they did not make the necessary three to get classification. In 1986 there was no Euroafrican championship and the winners of the cup were proclaimed European champions (Toschi and Italy).
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