An talented fleet of both young and more experienced Olympic sailors are ready to compete at the Lanzarote International Regatta, which takes place out of Marina Rubicón in the south of the Canary Island from 14 to 23 February.
Only in its fifth year, Lanzarote International Regatta was born in the middle of a pandemic and has since managed to establish itself as the opening event on the calendar for Olympic athletes from all over the world. In 2025, four Olympic classes will compete - 49er, 470 Mixed, ILCA 6 and ILCA 7 - and there will also be some non-Olympic competition with the Snipe doublehanded dinghy invited as a guest class.
The 49er class will be the first to get on the race course, with races starting on Saturday 15th and concluding on Tuesday 18th. With crews from countries such as Greece, the Netherlands and the USA, there will also be strong competition between the Spanish crews, the strongest of whom is likely to be Martín and Jaime Wizner.
New Spanish team with aspirations for LA 2028
From Thursday 20th to Sunday 23rd we will see the 470 Mixed, ILCA 6 and ILCA 7, on two separate race courses. All of them will compete in a maximum of 10 races plus the Medal Race, where only the 10 best crews will decide who makes it on to the podium. At the weekend, the Snipe will join in the racing.
The 470 Mixed class debuted as an Olympic event in Paris 2024 and will be back for the third consecutive year at the Lanzarote International Regatta. Local fans are keen to see how a new partnership is working out in early days, with aspirations of representing Spain in Los Angeles 2028. The highly experienced helmswoman Silvia Mas, who recently raced in the Women's America's Cup in Barcelona, has now teamed up with her new crew, Alex Marsans from Mallorca.
They have been sailing together since December and did not want to miss the opportunity to add hours of sailing in the wide range of conditions that Lanzarote offers. Silvia Mas commented: “We have been training here in January and February, because we consider Lanzarote to be the best place in terms of quality of training. There is sun and warm weather, meaning we can spend many hours on the water. There are all kinds of wind, both strong and light, and depending on which area you go to you can have more or less waves. I think it is the most complete place of all to train and have a good pre-season.”
“I was considering not going back to the 470 and, after the America's Cup in Barcelona, when Alex was part of the shore team, he convinced me to do a campaign together, and we saw that it could work. This year for me is to get back into the game. I had been out of the class for a year and a half, and for him it is a new class. But the long-term goal is Los Angeles 2028,” she said.
ILCA 7, formerly the Men's Laser, will be the largest class with athletes from Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Montenegro, Monaco, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Switzerland and Spain. The Spanish Nacra 17 sailor Tara Pacheco is testing herself in the women’s ILCA 6 fleet.
“This regatta is a unique opportunity for the best athletes to measure their strength at the start of the new Olympic cycle,” said Marina Rubicón CEO Rafael Lasso. “The aim is to consolidate Lanzarote as a centre of excellence for world sailing.”
How Lockdown put Lanzarote on the map
Up until a few years ago, Lanzarote was fairly well kept secret as a great training ground for Spanish sailors and a few well informed international competitors. How things have changed in the past few years, as Lasso explained: “During lockdown in Europe when a lot of regattas were being cancelled, we put up our hand and said ‘we’re ready to host some regattas!’ So we organised our first Lanzarote International Regatta in February 2021 which was already a success."
“People from different countries started to realise what an amazing venue we have, not just for training, but for championship racing. The 2022 edition was difficult when the Omicron strain of Covid was breaking out, but we still made it happen. In early 2024 Marina Rubicón hosted the iQFOiL Worlds and the 49er & 49erFX Worlds and fully established Lanzarote as a world-class venue for top competition.”
* According to the report prepared by the consultancy Auditax, the Lanzarote International Regatta generated an economic impact of 37.4 million euros in 2024. This international event organised by Marina Rubicón is sponsored by Turismo Lanzarote through its sports tourism product “Lanzarote Sports Destination”, Cabildo de Lanzarote through the Insular Sports Service, the Art, Culture and Tourism Centres of the Cabildo de Lanzarote and the Yaiza Town Hall; and the collaboration, among others, of the Canarian Sailing Federation, the Latin Sailing Federations and DinghyCoach.
