Barcelona said goodbye on Sunday, with a brilliant closing ceremony, to the Puig Copa América Femenina, the first competition of this kind that was held in the 173-year history of the event, framed in the 37th Copa América, recognizing a small ‘miracle’: the third final place of the Spanish Sail Team BCN women’s team, which achieved the greatest success of Spanish sailing in the history of the Copa América.
Now, most of the eleven members of the team (6 men and 5 women) will begin the journey in the Olympic campaign for Los Angeles 2024, on the SailGP World Circuit, on a future AC40 circuit, the TP52 or RC44 monohulls, but launching a future challenge: “We have shown that we have the talent to have an absolute America’s Cup team in Spain or to form a Young and Women’s team with the same options as the great teams”noted Silvia Mas, Neus Ballester, María Cantero, Paula Barceló and Nicole Van der Velden.
Although the Spanish did not go on stage at the event held on Sunday at the Village del Moll de la Fusta in Port Vell – only the two finalists did: the British Athena Pathway and the Italian Luna Rossa, the winner – and it was a great party Italian, the fans also chanted the name of Sail Team BCN.
In a competition in which, as in the Young America Cup, there were twelve teams (6 of the teams from the 37th America Cup and 6 invited by the organization), a cast was brought together that was not even in the Olympic Games or is the Sailing World Championships, brought together such high-level sailors.
Among the 72 sailors who competed there were eight Olympic champions, fourteen medalists, 51 world champions in different classes and a total of 38 of them had competed in the Olympic Games.
A week after knowing, on March 29, 2022, the designation of Barcelona as the venue for the 37th America’s Cup, the Barcelona transoceanic sailor Guillermo Altadill, then advanced: «Spain will not have a team in the 37th Copa América, but I have already started the negotiations not to simply participate, but to try to go out and win. And for that we have to start as soon as possible.”he added.
The six teams representing the 37th America’s Cup started with an added advantage since they all had the AC40 foil monohulls (11.90 meters in length) with which they were going to compete. Of the other six, only Sweden acquired an AC40 in April 2024 for training and competition.
The Altadill project took shape with the creation of the company AC Sailing Team BCN SL, on February 7, 2023, with Guillermo Altadill himself and the Irishman Steward Hosford, an expert in team organization, as administrators.
Already as team director, Altadill achieved the team’s first major sponsorship in June of that year, the Dutch Foundation Zero, which works on environmental sustainability projects. On September 29, the first list of crew members for both competitions was already given and training began in the waters of the Port of Sitges-Aiguadolç.
The six finally chosen from the list, from around twenty names from the Young America’s Cup (male or mixed crews under 26 years of age) were: Jaime Framis (San Sebastián, 21 years old) Martín Wizner (Vigo, 22 years old), Conrad Konitzer (Palma, 22 years old), Antonio Torrado (Alicante, 24 years old), Marcos Fernández A Coruña, 23 years old) and Albert Torres (Barcelona, 23 years old).
Those in the women’s Copa América were Neus Ballester (Palma, 20 years old), Maria Cantero (Gran Canaria, 27 years old), Silvia Mas (Barcelona, 28 years old/Tokyo Olympian). They would later be joined by the Olympic champion from Orense Támara Echegoyen (40 years), the Mallorcan Paula Barceló (28 years old) and also the Madrid-born Nicole Van der Velden.
The Barcelona Olympian and world champion Mónica Azón and the 23-year-old Majorcan sailor Albert Torres, with experience in sailing with foils, were the coordinators of the women’s and men’s teams respectively, along with the Portuguese Luis Brito as main coach.
It was announced that the Port of Sitges Aigualdolç would also be a sponsoring partner of the team, after its general director, Albert Beltran, together with Altadill, announced the agreement that the nautical base would be located there until July 2024 (ten months) where The offices, the AC40 simulator, the equipment containers, the room where the four support boats and the work container will be stored were installed.
They were also given several apartments and rooms at the Port Sitges hotel, in addition to food, so the team did not have to leave the port to go to train.
At the beginning of that month, the catamaran with foils (hydrofoils) GC32 (12 meters long), acquired in Switzerland and had belonged to the British INEOS, arrived at the Port of Aiguadolç.
At that time, Altadill acknowledged: «My job until now has been to find the money to finance the team and I have encountered many problems. Madrid sponsors do not want to invest in a team that sails in Barcelona and neither do Catalan companies because they do not know if it will be a Catalan or Spanish team; Some are not interested in it being Catalan and others in Spanish; and we are in the middle”.
Another great news came on December 13, 2023 when the agreement with CaixaBank as sponsor of Sail Team BCN was signed and presented. He joined the team’s other main sponsor, the Dutch Zero Foundation. A cycle that began in August of this year was closed with the agreement with the Port of Sitges Aiguadolç and later the technology group Capgemini
On March 25, 2024, the women’s team presented itself at the Port de Sitges Aiguadolç, already with Támara Echegoyen and Paula Barceló, in the middle of the Olympic campaign. On April 11 it was the turn of the Young team at the Sitges Yacht Club.
A critical moment for the team came in June when Guillermo Altadill, director of Sail Team BCN, left his position, as officially announced by the team itself on social networks, indicating: “Due to personal circumstances he has made the difficult decision to withdraw from the team”.
Owner of a fifty percent stake in the team, Altadill withdrew from the company created at the time, which was dissolved on July 17. Stewart Hosford, who until then shared half of the ownership of the team with Altadill, became its sole administrator and the Englishman Ross Daniel arrived as sports director.
In the month of July, the team moved to the Real Club Náutico de Barcelona, the club that represented it, other small sponsors were added, including the Antares group that offered apartments in a building in the city.
The truth is that with barely two million euros, the budget of Sail Team BCN, to which, in the end, 250,000 euros from Barcelona City Council were added, was one of the lowest in the competition. An AC40 costs 2.5 million euros and experts indicated that a campaign with a chance of success would require six or seven million.
Another blow occurred on September 9 when the names of the crew members who were going to sail aboard the AC40 were announced, both in the Youth and Women’s teams, and the departure of the Olympic and world champion team was made official. Támara Echegoyen for “to continue with other professional projects”according to a press release from the team.
Neither this diminished the ambition of either the Young team, which finished sixth, nor the Women’s team of Sail Team BCN, which also had the youngest helmsman in the competition and the second youngest in the history of the Cup: Neus Ballester, with only 20 years.
The support of the general director of the Puig firm, Marc Puig, sponsoring the women’s competition and Daniel Puig promoting Barcelona as the venue for the event was another point to highlight.
In addition to the sporting success, the Sail Team BCN won the battle of image and communication thanks to the only Spanish Press Chief in this America’s Cup, the Valencian journalist and television commentator Nacho Gómez-Zarzuela. There was no medium that did not highlight the ease of interviewing team members, the speed of the news generated; a really effective job, along with that of Alba López on social networks.
