As a sport, sailing has the largest number of world championships due to the diversity of equipment and disciplines.
The number of titles is due to the diversity of equipment.
Sanctioned World Championships fall into the following categories: Classes that are members of World Sailing are entitled to hold World Championships if they are spread into a minimum of two continents and have certain number of nations and continents take part in two of the last three championships (the number of nations depend of the size of the equipment).
[3] This is not a complete list but the following are known to have won eight or more World Championship titles.
505 (1957, 1959), Dragon[citation needed], Finn (1958, 1959), Flying Dutchman (1962), Soling (1969, 1974), Star (1966, 1967),Snipe (1959),Half Ton (1972, 1981) || [81] Laser (1995, 1996, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2013), Star (2007, 2011, 2012) Farr 40 (2012), Melges 20 (2013, 2015), Melges 24 (1999, 2007), Etchells (2008, 2011, 2014),