Spain’s hopes were stuck at a buoy at the first gate of the second round of the semifinals of the women’s Copa del América. After surprisingly winning the first race of the qualifying round, a mistake in the initial windward turn (the door opposite the start) ended the dream of the final, which seemed possible until the end. The team lost its flight and finished last in the second round, a feat impossible to recover in the subsequent regattas. Even repeating victory in the fourth and final regatta was insufficient. Luna Rossa (Italy) and Athenea (United Kingdom) will compete in the final of the Puig America’s Cup. Spain finally finishes third, close to the classification, and with the unanswered question of what would have happened if the team had trained in conditions and with a boat of your own.
Despite the end of the journey, the performance of the Spanish team on the high seas catapults a project that was born with more passion than reason and that has overcome all possible obstacles. Without its own boat, the team had barely trained a dozen hours with the AC40 on the high seas before the start of the America’s Cup; and lost its director, Guillermo Altadill; and to one of her references, the Olympic champion Tamara Echegoyen, in the previous months. The future of the team depends on the choice of the venue for the next competition. Repeating in Barcelona or moving to Valencia would multiply the options of supporting a team that has performed well above expectations.
Nothing seems to better illustrate the spirit of a team with so much talent than the words of Silvia Mas, former world champion in 470, before the last round, when classification seemed impossible. “It will be all or nothing and we will go for everything.” They almost succeeded, because they were only three points behind the British and Italians (they finished tied) in the general classification.
The third overall position, in any case, exceeds all expectations because the Spanish sailors themselves admitted in recent weeks that the difference in training hours on the high seas compared to the teams with their own AC40 was too great to aspire to greater successes. “They are light years away,” Neus Ballester warned EL PAÍS a few hours before the start of the women’s edition. The distance with the historical teams (Luna Rossa, Team New Zealand and Ineos Britannia) was not such, but rather between Spain and the Netherlands and Sweden, the teams invited to the competition.
