The Real Club Marítimo de Santander is making final preparations to start the J80 Spanish Cup on Thursday. The expectations have been fulfilled and 30 participating teams from Galicia, the Basque Country, Andalusia, the Valencian Community and Cantabria are already registered.
The inaugural event of the City of Santander International Sailing Week loosens its moorings from Thursday with a day of registration and technical inspections of the boats, while on Friday from 3:00 p.m. the first of the nine regattas scheduled until Sunday. The competition area will be located in the open, in front of the Sardinero, in one of the usual regatta fields in Santander and which has been used frequently since the 2014 Olympic class world championship.
The renowned RCMS regatta committee, this time under the command of Arianne Mainemare, has selected a second regatta field within the bay of the city of Santander in case of adverse conditions in the open.
As a novelty, it should be noted that the XV Spanish Cup of these monotypes (completely identical boats) J80 will be held in Absolute, Youth (minimum skipper and two crew members under 25 years of age) and Mixed categories (at least 40% of the crew must be of a different gender). The rise of the mixed category in this edition of the International Week is more than evident, with a significant number of women actively taking part in the tests organized every weekend by the Real Club Marítimo de Santander.
Among the thirty J80 participants, the units that took the podium of the 2021 Spanish Cup stand out, with the current holder of the Newind Food title and Javier Padrón as skipper, Fredo La Estrella del Norte under the command of the two-time J80 world champion José María Torcida and Jaime Piris’s Mercury Avator, all three belonging to the RCMS.
The Biobizz team of Jose Azqueta (2022 Euskadi champion), Raitán with Ángel Herrerías as skipper (2022 Cantabria champion), the GP Bullhound with Gustavo Martínez Doreste (2022 Andalusian runner-up), or the J80 World Champion Solintal team Ignacio Camino are other teams that will have to be followed very closely.
The City of Santander International Sailing Week is the legacy of the great 2014 World Championship of Olympic classes and the 2017 World Cup Final Series, and has the support of the Santander City Council, the Port of Santander, the Government of Cantabria, La Sociedad, Lebaniego Jubilee Year, Sport Cantabria, IMD and V Centenary of the trip around the world.
