2023-08-01 08:00:17
BarcelonaWatching an F50 boat sail is not an experience you’ll forget. Rather than sailing, they fly, they rise up from the water. For four years there has been a world sailing championship that “is like Formula 1, but at sea”, according to Florian Trittel (Münsterlingen, Switzerland, 1994). Boats very similar to those already training in Barcelona these days for the America’s Cup, but in this case in a competition where you don’t have to wait a handful of years to see them. Each season, the SailGP world championship experiences different events and recently for the first time the Spanish boat managed to win one, in the United States. Florian was on board, of course.
A new success in the career of this Catalan sailor, member of the CN el Ballís de Sant Andreu de Llavaneres, born in Switzerland and son of Germans who came to live on the Catalan coast with a love for sailing already at blood “My grandfather and my father were already sailing in Germany. I was a child and I was already in the water,” a man who has done all the roles of the auca, at sea, tells ARA. You have navigated with optimist, windsurf, he kitesurfing, the 49er class (two crew) and the Nacra 17. With the latter discipline, with a mixed format on board, he was Olympic at the 2021 Tokyo Games, when Trittel and the Canarian Tara Pacheco were sixth and were close to the medals He is now back at 49 and is the reigning European champion partnering with Diego Botín. “The challenge is to win a medal at the Paris Games,” he lets go calmly.
At the age of 18 he left to live in Tarifa, since the coast of Cádiz is ideal for the practice of kitesurfing, a discipline that Trittel hoped would be Olympic in 2020. The sport, where a large kite drags you through the waves, had been said to be Olympic, but organizers scrapped it at the last minute. Floiran was able to be at the Games in Japan betting to participate in the Nacra 17 modality. “Being an Olympian has always been a dream, now I want medals,” says a man who studied business administration and management. After a few years in Tarifa, he returned to Barcelona, where he created his business, Flying Sardine, a company that manufactures foils (spoilers) of kitesurfing. “Every year I spend 300 days on the water, sailing,” admits a sailor who knows everything about fins. In fact, his job aboard the Spanish ship AC50 is to control the foil rigid that allows these ships to fly over the water. “I am the trimmer of wing, which is the large sail, but in this case it is like a rigid Airbus 380 wing. It moves with some flaps and basically what I do is give the boat gas. It’s like the gas pedal of a car, as the sail gives you the propulsion to move forward,” he explains. F50s can reach 100 kilometers per hour. “When you’re up there it’s like flying, you’re on a cloud” he smiles Florian.
The competition was created by American businessman Lawrence J. Ellison and New Zealander Russell Coutts after the defeat of Ellison’s team, Oracle Team USA, in the 2017 America’s Cup. The idea was to boost the use of F50 catamarans in annual competition, a tournament where all boats are exactly the same for all teams. In fact, they are owned by the organization, which gives them to the teams, which have to represent a country. “In the first year the difference in level was noticeable, but we have been adjusting the team and improving. The goal is to be competitive and to be in the finals this season. We had the dream of winning a big prize, but we never would have said that would come so soon,” reasons Trittel. With boats the same for everyone, what makes the difference in the competition is the crew. And the Spanish team has been strengthened this year with new faces, such as Majorcan Paula Barceló, Jake Lilley and one of the great names in Catalan sailing, Jordi Xammar, as pilot. The results were not long in coming.
It all started three years ago, when with the Sergi Pi they followed the start of this competition: “We said to each other that this is the dream of any sailor. It is the Formula 1 of the sea and we wanted to be there. And nothing, we went to see Russell, who’s the CEO, Russell Kurz, at the grand finale of the first season in Marseille. We called him and invited him to dinner. And when the Chinese team fell out of the competition, offered us to come in. We’re very competitive and we’re also busy with Olympic campaigns, but we dream of being champions at the end of the season one day,” says Florian.
A sailor who has not stood still in recent weeks, as he has participated in the pre-Olympic tests organized a few weeks ago in Marseille, port that will be the headquarters of sailing in the summer of 2024, partnering the 49er with the Cantabrian Diego Botín. And with almost no time to rest, they crossed the world to compete in California in a SailGP World Cup event with the state team. And for the first time, they won. The first two World Cups were won by the Australians, ahead of the Japanese. Boats that, for the first time, finished behind him.
On top of the F50 is also his partner in the Olympic adventure, Diego Botín, a fact that helps combine two dreams, the Olympic and that of SailGP. “On the 49er I’m also in charge of the sail, where you have to do it with your hands and ropes, while on the F50 you have a lever, like a joystick, and it’s all hydraulic”, he explains didactically and with passion, with the conviction that if it’s explained well, sailing is exciting. “Sailing until now has been a product that has been difficult to sell, It’s not football, that of couse. But this competition is a good product. People see it, say, oysters, this is amazing. One of the goals of the SailGP and also of our team is to bring sailing closer to everyone,” he adds. At the moment, there is an appointment in the state, in Cadiz, on the calendar, but Florian dreams of having one at home, in Barcelona. Who knows if taking advantage of the impact of the America’s Cup. “It would be a very big opportunity for Catalonia and for the Catalan coast”. In fact, Trittel admits that he would be delighted if state sailing ever presented a boat to participate in the America’s Cup, which only happened in 2007. “And I would like to be on board, of course,” he concludes.
#days #year #water #dreams #true