Preparations for the 52nd Princess Sofia Mallorca Trophy are advancing at a good pace. The regatta will bring together the ten Olympic classes that will compete in Paris 2024 in the Bay of Palma from March 29 to April 8, and the pre-registration level announces a historic edition.
With a month to go before the start of the competition, 952 teams and more than 1,200 sailors of 63 nationalities have already formalized their pre-registration, an exceptional figure that confirms a return to pre-pandemic levels, as indicated by Pepe Cazador. After more than two decades as head of results management for the Princess Sofia Mallorca Trophy, Cazador is an authoritative voice to talk about the event’s statistics: “The usual thing is that between the number of pre-registered and the number of registered, about five percent fail between injuries, visa problems and others, which today would allow us to venture a final number of registered in the environment of the 900 ships”.
pre-olympic year
The pandemic reduced the Olympic cycle between Tokyo and Paris from the usual four years to three, an exception that convulsed the programs of sailors, teams and federations, and which conditioned events such as the Princess Sofia Mallorca Trophy, which could not be held in 2020 and 2021. In 2022 it returned with force, bringing together more than a thousand sailors and close to 800 boats but showing such notable absences as China or Japan, which kept their borders closed, and Russia due to the global veto. According to Hunter, “The pre-Olympic year is always the strongest in the cycle, but the year before Rio 2016 we had 863 boats and the year before Tokyo 2020 we reached 869, so we can anticipate that this edition will be especially large” .
Three classes show quota tensions: 49er, with 101 pre-registered and a cap of 90; Formula Kite Men, with 122 against the limit of 100; and ILCA 7, with 185 applications received and 180 places available. “When this is the case, the last places are awarded based on the ranking to ensure that none of the teams with Olympic options are left out” . It is the classes and World Sailing (the international sailing federation) who stipulate the limits established in each category. “In Nacra 17, the 55 boats that exist in the world have pre-registered, so the class is complete.”
More than 60 countries represented
The distribution of participants by classes and nationalities is very irregular. The ranking by number of pre-registered with one month to go is headed by ILCA 7 (185), followed by Formula Kite Men (122), ILCA 6 (118), iQFOiL Men (115), 49er (101), iQFOiL Women (76 ), 470 Mixed (67), 49er FX (61), Nacra 17 (55) and Formula Kite Women (52). By number of participants, France is the federation that contributes the most teams (82), followed by Spain (77), Great Britain (64), Italy (62), China (59) and Germany (50). Another 13 countries come to Mallorca with a single representative: Brunei, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Saint Lucia, Lithuania, Monaco, Puerto Rico, Romania, Slovakia, Uruguay, the Republic of Vanuatu and Ukraine, which this year will be represented by Sofía Naumenco in the competitive ILCA 6 class.
The 2023 Sailing World Cup 52 Trofeo SAR Princesa Sofía Mallorca is held under the joint organization of Club Nàutic S’Arenal, Club Marítimo San Antonio de la Playa, Real Club Náutico de Palma, the Royal Spanish Sailing Federation and the Balearic Federation de Vela, with the support of World Sailing and the main Balearic public institutions.
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