Clear goals for Cati Darder for the coming years after being reelected FBV president

After a first term that can be defined as successful, Cati Darder has renewed her position as president of the Balearic Sailing Federation for another four years. A new term lies ahead for her to continue promoting the talent of young sailors from the Islands who continue to win titles nationally and internationally.

From Club Nàutic S’Arenal, the president of the Balearic Sailing Federation, Cati Darder, and one of her new additions, coach Toni Ripoll, tell us about their main goals and how they will work from the entity to achieve them.

"It is a pride to continue leading the federation and representing our sailors and clubs in the best way I know and can," Darder acknowledges, pleased to have renewed her presidency. "In some ways, this implies that things have gone reasonably well and that people trust us for this second period," she notes.

In her second term, she has set two major challenges and goals: improving technification and securing an operational nautical headquarters for the Federation. "It would be important to secure a space where we can have the teams, which we haven't had since the federation lost its place in Cala Nova," the president recalls, adding that "there is an opportunity that I am going to explore and fight to see if we can get that space so that our sailors have the site and facilities they deserve."

As for the goal of improving technification, Darder has already put the necessary means in place to achieve it with a star signing, Toni Ripoll, who has been an Olympic coach for the last nine Olympics, since the Barcelona 92 Games. "We have made a commitment to count on Toni to refine how we work with the teams and how coaches approach the weekly work with the sailors because, from my point of view, we have the best coaches," the president acknowledges.

After being coach of the Swiss 470 mixed team at the last Paris 2024 Olympics, Toni Ripoll faces this new stage of his life with enthusiasm. "My main goal is to contribute my experience as a coach and to help the coaches we have in the Federation," explains the coach, who adds that "helping them to become better professionals is not a short-term project, because training always takes time and we are always learning."

Indeed, as we have seen in recent years, sailing is constantly evolving, incorporating new disciplines as well as new regulations applied to competition. A change that Ripoll has experienced since his beginnings in the sea. "In my time as an athlete, we hardly had anyone by our side, if at all, occasionally a coach. Nowadays, sailors are surrounded by a multidisciplinary team with meteorologists, psychologists, physical trainers... apart from their technical coach," he clarifies.

Regarding the present and future of Balearic sailing, the coach assures that "the Balearics have always been at the top of Spanish sailing and even, in some specific cases, at the top of the world." For this reason, the president of the Federation has corroborated that "we have many young people, excited to participate and to undertake an Olympic project. And I trust that we will have Balearic representation in several classes at the next Games."