He has sport in his vein. He navigates, runs, rides a bicycle… He doesn’t get close and when he starts (it costs him little) he goes all out. An Olympic medalist and world champion, she knows what it takes to get to the top and stay on top. Mónica Azón, who continues to compete at a high level, is the coach of the Sail Team Barcelona women’s team, which will participate in the Puig Women’s America’s Cup. At the moment she is making an initial selection of sailors for a first official training in September. The women’s competition, like the youth competition, is the great novelty and commitment of the Barcelona edition of the Copa del América.
“For female sailors it is an incredible opportunity,” she says. Self-demand and illusion are not at odds with age or with the list of winners. He plans to make several calls to be able to observe the athletes in action: “The idea is that at the end of the process there are eight left, of which four will compete, but that does not mean that the same ones will come out every day, it will depend on the wind, the format of the competition… Each profile has its strengths and weaknesses and what you have to look for is that all the gear fits together”, maintains Azón.
He works in parallel with Albert Torres, the head of the youth team (female or male or mixed crews under 25 years old) of Sail Team Barcelona. At the forefront of this wave, propelled by the Reial Club Nàutic de Barcelona, ??is fellow sailor and Olympic coach Guillermo Altadill and international team manager Stewart Hosford.
Until the works of the Olympic Port are completed, where the Puig Women’s America’s Cup will be held between September 26 and October 16, 2024, the women’s team will train in Sitges. The objectives are maximum, “although we know that we will have to work hard,” acknowledges Azón. Nothing new. They will have to adapt to the AC40 and the foils (hydrofoils) that fly with four crew members. They will compete against eleven other boats: those of the six teams already participating in the men’s category (New Zealand, Great Britain, Italy, Switzerland, the United States and France) and teams from the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, Sweden and Australia.
Azón expects a certain Barcelona’92 effect from the Copa del América. It was then that, at the age of 19, Theresa Zabell chose her as a reserve sailor. She then competed in the Athens Games (2004) and in Beijing (2008). Together with her sister Sandra and Graciela Pisonero, she won two World Championships (in 2002 and 2006) and one in Europe and now collects medals in the Laser Master class.
With more than thirty years of sailing, sea and regattas behind him, if he has to choose an exciting moment in his career – “there are many but…” – he chooses one that he lived on solid ground: the entrance to the stadium in the inauguration of the 1992 Olympic Games, “it was incredible, with that atmosphere, that intensity, the stadium on the verge of bursting… I remember it and I still get goosebumps… you think that all the effort is worth it It’s a shame when you see things like that.”
I would like next year’s event to translate into a more and better opening to the sea. In a more and better sensitivity towards the sail. She is not in this by family tradition but they lived in El Masnou and she started with a summer course like so many other children. And she never stopped sailing. She earned her journalism degree by studying in the afternoon to reserve the morning for training. She always pending the weather, always pending the wind. From here to there training and competing, lately always accompanied by Phil, the dog she adopted from a shelter in 2017. Since a year ago, when it was announced that the America’s Cup would be held in Barcelona, ??she has also been sailing with foils and from September his professional activity will revolve around this regatta.
