The aspiring olympics, ready for the 470 World Championships at the Club Nàutic s’Arenal

The participants and trainers were given ironic smiles after the torrential rain of yesterday and the variation of conditions of high sea. It was the training day before the start of the competition, today Tuesday, for the 470 World Championships at the Club Nàutic s’Arenal (CNA).

Ferrán Muniesa, general director of the CNA, affirmed: “These are the worst weather days that we have had all winter. During the warm weeks I said to my colleagues that when the regatta starts it will be different, rain will come and we will have to put the heating on, and that is what exactly has happened”.

Experienced sailor and coach Juan de la Fuente is working with Spanish team Jordi Xammar and Nora Brugman, who have already secured their place at the Paris 2024 Games. De la Fuente, who won an Olympic bronze in 470 for his home country of Argentina, said that if you're going to have to endure bad weather, this was the right way to have it. "We would never have wanted to go training like this, but we had great weather over the last few weeks, warm days on the water, cycling in the mornings, it's been really nice. Now we're competing, so we have to go out anyway, we don't even question it. When you go to the Olympics you keep working no matter what the weather throws at you."

Many major nations are about to embark on a great selection battle, including the Germans, who have three world-class teams and a total of six boats entered in the regatta. One of the top German teams are 2022 world champions Luise Wanser and Philipp Autenrieth, who suffered a setback a couple of weeks ago when Wanser fell off her road bike while training in Mallorca and badly scraped her face and leg. However, she is recovering well and is very positive about the German trials that begin this week at the World Cup.

It is also the start of the Japanese events, with three teams looking to show what they can do against the favorites, defending world champions Keiju Okada and Miho Yoshioka.

Two major sailing nations that have yet to qualify for a place at the Games are Italy and Great Britain. With only one European place available this week, it will be interesting to see which of these two powerhouse nations takes the spot and who will be left to fight it out at the Last Chance regatta at the end of April, the Semaine Olympique Française in Hyères in the south of France.

Yesterday it was the Austrian team of Lara Vadlau and Lukas Maehr who won the training regatta. They were led by Gustavo Martinez Doreste of Spain, who saw an opportunity in the forecast. "I think this championship is going to be very open. It's going to be difficult conditions, with all kinds of winds. There could be a group of six, seven or eight boats with a chance of taking the title, and consistency will be the key. There's no doubt that if you look at the last few years it's very likely that the Swedish team (Dahlberg and Karlsson) and the Spanish team (Xammar and Brugman) are a little bit ahead of the rest, but I think this World Cup will be very specific because of the conditions we're going to have. We'll see what happens."

So, this could be a good week for the underdogs, although the favorites are not worried. They are training for the unexpected. They know that to be considered the best sailor you have to be able to perform in any conditions on any given day. And if we look at the mixed forecast for the next week of action, that's exactly what they'll get.