Nine balearic sailors fight for the first tickets for Parñis 2024 in the World race at La Haya

The olympic sail starts this friday to its journey to Paris 2024 with the World Championship at La Haya, in which they will get the first seats for the next Olympic games. 28 Spanish sailors, among them 8 balearic, will sail with a solid team with the objective to close the world race with the Olympic race passport for the most number of possible classes.

The past year of the Games, the World Sailing, international federation of sailing, gathers once again the same event by antonomasia of all the Olympic categories, reuniting at La Haya 1094 sailors which will fight for the 107 spots to be awarded on this occasion: eleven for the iQFOil masculine and eleven for the women, eight for the Formula Kite Masculine and eight for the women, sixteen for the ILCA7 and sixteen ILCA 6, ten for the 49er and ten for the 49er FX, eight for the 470 Mix, and nine for the Nacra 17.

As Francisco Gil confirms, director of Olympic preparation, “the main objective is to classify the country for the OLympic Games. Evidently everybody would like to win and all of the medals that come will be celebrated, but really the goal is to classify the country”.

For this, among the Spanish we find consolidated athletes together with great revelations, sailors with wide experience in their categories and brilliant spearheads of the new classes. A team that has been changing during the Olympic cycle and that, as Gil continued, came to the recent Test Event in Marseille on that upward trend: “At the Test Event very few countries could have been classified in all the categories, but in Spain at that moment they would have been classified in seven categories. We are one of the powers of sailing, it is non-negotiable and we have to be there to fight to continue like this. Powerful Countries , like a team, with ten classes, there are not too many in the world”.

In individual classes they play an especial protagonist in the new disciplines like the IQFOIL. In the masculine team there is a sailor from the Club Nàutic Sa Ràpita, Nacho Baltasar, who made an excellent performance in the Test Event of Marsella finishing  in fifth place in general. Furthermore, there will also participate the sailor of Club Nàutic S’Arenal Bernat Tomás and from Alicante Jorge Aranzueque.

In he feminine we count on  with two of the Top5 of the world ranking; Pilar Lamadrdid, the second of the iQFOiL feminine, and Gisela Pulido, fourth of the Formula Kite feminine. Next to Lamadrid they are close ends of olympic Nicole van der Velden and a sailor of the Club Nàutic S’Arenal Andrea Torres. Bernat Cortés, Alex Climent and Jacobo Espi from the masculine team for the Formula Kite.

At ILCA 7 will sail Joel Rodríguez, Leo Barreto, Joaquín Blanco and the sailor of the Club Nàutic S’Arenal Pep Cazador, meanwhile Cristina Pujol, Ana Moncada, Lara Himmes and Martina Reino will compete in the category ILCA 6.

In respect of the double categories, at 470 there are four crews: Jordi Xammar and Nora Brugman, Silvia MAs and Nico Rodríguez, the sailor from the Club Nàutic Sa Ràpita Neus Ballester and Jaime Wizner, the majorcan guys Pablo Ruiz from Real Club Náutico de Palma and Mar Gil from Club de Vela Puerto Andratx. Other than the Olympic goal, Xammar and Brugman come to the race as the current sup champions of the world. The team of the 49er is composed by the duets of Diego botín and Florian Trittel, the sailor of the Real Club Náutico of Palma, Albert Torres and his canarian team player Elías Aretz, and Pol Marsans and José Manuel Ruiz, among them Botín and Trittel will try to improve on the world silver obtained last year.  Támara Echegoyen and the sailor of the Club Nàutic S’Arenal Paula Barceló that obtained the world bronze, they will defend our flag next to Alicia Fras and Elena Barrio at 49er FX. At Nacra 17, Tara Pacheco and Andrés Barrio will experience their first world race at La Haya as crew.

After the opening ceremony of Thursday 10th of August, the tests at sea will start on Friday 11th and will end Sunday 20th. They will have one of the most difficult races in the world, which no country has been able to train until this week.

The weather conditions, given in early by the meteorologist of the RFEV, Ricardi Ravagnan, the arrival of a cold front linked to low pressure, with unstable wind conditions that can soon give away days with a lot of wind as well as little. The currents will also be a point to take into account in the amalgam of external circumstances that in sailing set the tone and test the skill of the athletes.