The Copa del Rey Mapfre turns 40 in this 2022 edition and the Real Club Náutico de Palma is preparing to celebrate this anniversary with an intense program of regattas in the bay of Palma and a no less determined sustainability project to maintain its emblematic competition between the most advanced in international sailing.
The tests will take place from this Monday, August 1, until Saturday 6 and bring together a fleet of 111 sailboats of 20 nationalities, which will be distributed in three regatta fields in the bay. There will be nine classes in contention, four of unequal boats that compete with compensated times and five of one-design boats, which compete in real time. One of the monotype classes is the Women's Cup, the women's category created by the RCNP in 2019 to give greater visibility to women in this sport, in which they have always competed but in which they have historically been a minority in relation to men. mens.
The 40th anniversary of the Copa del Rey, which was born in 1982, includes acts of celebration on land, as a tribute to the Spanish Navy, which, through the Naval Regatta Commission, has taken part in all the editions held. The Aifos 500 competes precisely with the Commission's banner, with King Felipe as skipper, showing the resolute support of the Royal Family for the regatta, support that throughout these 40 years has been fundamental in turning the Palma race into a one of the most important sailing competitions in the Mediterranean.
The RCNP also takes advantage of the anniversary to present an ambitious sustainability plan to achieve efficient management of the environmental impact produced by the competition. In the words of Manu Fraga, sports director of the RCNP and director of the Copa del Rey Mapfre, “for years we have been taking steps towards a more sustainable regatta that materializes the RCNP's commitment to nature and especially to the sea. This year we have wanted to go further, and we are not only going to calculate and neutralize our emissions, but we are committed to reducing them by following the objectives set by the United Nations in its 2030 agenda. We have taken on the challenge of being the first event with a positive impact through a program that involves all the agents: sponsors, professionals and those attending our event, promoting and supporting local projects for the conservation and regeneration of the Balearic Sea”.
The initiative seeks to turn the Copa del Rey Mapfre into a benchmark in nautical sport and has the experience of a local technology company, Trueworld, which has designed the strategy and has implemented its environmental and innovative solutions. They collaborate with the Global Omnium project to calculate the carbon footprint and AENOR for its certification.
"The goal is to find a meeting point between development and the environment, where both can coexist and have a future," explains Marco Mendoza, CEO of Trueworld. “It starts from the idea of being able to transmit the data of the impacts of this regatta in real time and not just stay in the analysis. At a technological level, we are creating a digital twin of the bay through the deployment of probes and buoys to be able to measure in real time everything from noise pollution to atmospheric and marine emissions.”
Marco Mendoza assures that the Copa del Rey Mapfre will demonstrate that an international sporting event can have a positive environmental effect, "something that seemed a bit antagonistic, but which we hope will be the first of many events with this model."
