Cascais (Portugal)
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Starting tomorrow, nine boats will compete in Cascais for one of the most prestigious trophies in world sailing: the Rolex TP52 World Championship Cascais 2022. Every sailor worth his salt wants to have this trophy in his record, but only one crew will be the winner next Saturday in the always challenging waters of the Portuguese coast.
Today in the official training regatta it started with 13 knots. The official training consisted of a training start and two windward-leeward tasks that were won by Quantum and Provezza.
Everything is very open, so much so that there are up to four teams that have a serious chance of becoming champions on the podium of the Clube Naval de Cascais: Quantum, Sled, Platoon and Phoenix.
By tradition, Doug DeVos’ Quantum Racing would have to be put first. The North American sailboat has won the World Cup three times and coincidentally all of them in even years, as is the case in this edition. In addition, and this is already a much more scientific fact, the Americans have just won the first race of the 2022 season of 52 Super Series in the waters of Baiona.
Those of DeVos had not won an event since 2019, coincidentally their last victory was in Cascais in 2019. A very long streak for the team that has historically dominated the 52 Super Series. In Baiona they won and convinced with a very solid job and in Cascais they intend to continue in this line of results: “We face the regatta as we always do, going heat by heat, thinking of always being among the first. For us, the fact that it is the World Championship does not make us change this strategy, it is one more of the five regattas of the year”, explains Michelle Ivaldi, Quantum’s navigator who, like the rest of the team, is well aware that this is a long-distance race with the aim of winning the competition title for the fifth time.
But Cascais is not Bayonne, and that the forecasts speak of conditions for a more moderate event in wind and wave than Cascais is capable of offering, at least in the first two or three days of the World Cup. However, Víctor Mariño, rough of the Platoon, warns: “Here the report can give you 12 knots, but when the northwest enters it immediately goes up to 18 and that is already big words, that is already Cascais”.
A Platoon that has been one of the two teams that has mounted a third pedestal on the ship. They already did it in 2018 when the Rolex TP52 World Championship was already held in Cascais and now they install it again: “It’s a little help because it allows us at certain times to put the weight of the grinders behind us and that lifts our bow so we can plan a bit more. It forces us to change the maneuvers somewhat, but it is not a problem either. What if it helps? Well, everything you do to the ship and give you a small advantage is always welcome in a fleet as even as this one”. The other boat that has assembled the third grinder is the other sailboat designed by Rolf Vrolijk, the Provezza de Ergim Imre, which also carries the only professional helmsman in the fleet, John Cutler.
The other two clear favorites for the title are Takashi Okura’s Sled, which defends the title won in November last year in the waters of RCN Palma, and the Plattner family’s Phoenix. The Americans have recovered their point guard at the helm this season and as soon as they complement each other they will aspire to everyone as they did last year with two wins, one of them the World Cup and, for the first time, the title of the 52 Super Series season breaking the hegemony of Quantum and Azzurra.
For their part, the Phoenix have a superlative team and with the arrival of Australian Tom Slingsby in the tactic they have become a constant candidate for the final victory. They have already come close to victory on several occasions and, without a doubt, with Tony Norris at the helm, they are one of the teams to take into account in the waters of CN de Cascais.
Sled tactician Francesco Bruni explains: “We are very happy to compete in an event as important as this one in Cascais. The whole team is delighted because we like the site, the hospitality of the Cascais CN and we like the conditions offered by the regatta. We defend the championship, but it is nothing like where we won the title last year, in Palma, with what we are going to find now in the Atlantic. It will be a very tough regatta to defend the title. But we know what needs to be done to retain the title. Our owner is back this week and it will be great to sail with him again. In Bayonne some things did not go well and we paid for being rookies in those conditions”.
Joan Vila, navigator of the Interlodge, maintains: “We really like to compete in Cascais. Although this year it seems that the hardness that this place always shows has calmed down a bit. But we are going to have a good breeze every day and so we can have interesting regattas. For us, the important thing is to continue improving based on the confidence that the results in Baiona give us. We are not yet at the level of winning races, but we believe that we are getting closer and closer to the incredible level of this fleet of 52 Super Series. This year we released new sails and the truth is that it shows because last year’s were from the previous season and these new ones make a bit of difference compared to last year’s”.
Live TV from Thursday
The regatta can be followed live tomorrow and the day after on the 52 Super Series website with virtual images and live commentary. The sleeves are scheduled to start at 1:00 p.m. in Portugal. From Thursday to Saturday there will be a live TV broadcast of the Rolex TP52 World Championship heats with footage from the water and commentary both on land and where all the action is on the water (www.52superseries.com).
www.abc.es
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism