Balearic yachting starts the countdown to Paris 2024

This August the Olympic Class World Championships were held in The Hague, a competition in which the first places for Paris 2024 were shared out and in which Spain managed to qualify seven classes for the next Olympic Games: 470, 49er, 49er FX, Nacra 17, iQFOiL M, iQFOiL F and ILCA 7.

The Olympic Sprint World Championships were also held in Duisburg, Germany, where in addition to winning a record 14 medals, six places for Paris 2024 were won: Men's C2 500, Men's K2 500, Men's K4 500, Women's C2 500, Women's C1 200 and Men's VL2 200.

Now the real countdown to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is beginning. After the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, which were finally held in 2021 due to the world pandemic, the Balearic sailors and paddlers began their preparation for the most important event of their sporting careers, the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, whose inauguration will be on 26th of July in an unprecedented place accessible to the entire population, the Seine River.

Three years of training and national and international competitions, as on this occasion the Olympic cycle has been shorter, which will culminate in a sporting milestone difficult to reach for all of them, representing Spain in the Olympic Games. Some are already experts and will repeat, such as the Majorcan paddler and double Olympic medallist Marcus Cooper, who will fight for that precious metal once again with his teammates Saúl Craviotto, Carlos Arévalo and Rodrigo Germade in K4 500. It is also possible that we will see Cooper as the flag bearer of the Spanish Olympic team in the opening ceremony, although this fact, which would be a privilege, has not yet been confirmed.

Another Majorcan who is repeating in the Olympic Games is the sailor from Club Nàutic S'Arenal Paula Barceló, who, in Tokyo, her first Games, came very close to winning a medal with her teammate Támara Echegoyen in the 49er FX class. The tandem is Spain's bet in this discipline and will try to get rid of the thorn of that fourth place achieved in Tokyo and climb the podium on the Olympic regatta course in Marseille.

And in the new Olympic IQFoil class we may also see a Majorcan representing the Spanish team, and that is the sailor from Club Nàutic Sa Ràpita, Nacho Baltasar. The "iqfoiler", who in the last year has had a stratospheric sporting evolution, has been the one who has achieved in the last World Championship the country's place in this discipline. In addition to qualifying Spain for the Olympic Games, Baltasar performed impeccably at the Test Event in Marseille, where he finished fifth. Achievements that could give him that desired place and participate, at just 19 years of age, in his first Olympic Games.

These are, for the moment, the confirmations and possible representatives of Spain and the Balearic Islands in canoeing and sailing at the next Olympic Games to be held in Paris from 26th of  July to 11th of August. Although there are still a little more than ten months ahead in which many things can happen before we see our Balearic athletes parading down the river Senna.