As Christmas approaches there is a regatta always marked in red on the calendar, and this is none other than the Christmas Race, which has been held for almost half a century in the bay of Palamós.
From December 18 to 22, hundreds of sailors attend the event on time. Palamós dresses long. From the Club Nàutic Costa Brava-Vela Palamós and the City Council this year they have made a commitment to bring the regatta closer to the city, unifying everything in a single venue located in Platja Gran, as is already the case with the Palamós International Optimist Trophy, the regatta largest children’s sailboat in the world in the open sea.
In this edition of the Christmas Race, 240 boats and 390 sailors have participated, in what is considered the great winter regatta on the European continent, due to quantity and tradition.
The Palamós Christmas Race over the last few years has been adapting to the circumstances. It was born as an Olympic sailing regatta, but in the last decade the professionalization of the Olympic teams led to its reinvention as a World Sailing strategic class regatta.
In this year’s edition the classes chosen were the ILCA 4, the ILCA 6 – with its version of the Olympic class in the female format -, the 420 and the 29er. For this last class, for the second consecutive year Christmas opened its EuroCup 2025 circuit, made up of eleven regattas at the European level.
From there we just had to wait for everything to work like clockwork and for the meteorology to accompany us, always complex at these times in the Mediterranean, where you might find an anticyclone or a gale. There was a little of everything, the wind was capricious. And Christmas is never an easy regatta for anyone. Light winds were the predominant ones during the week, but enough to be able to haggle reliably.
Christmas is a great opportunity for the national fleet to measure itself against the international fleet, that is where the comparison can be made. In this edition of the nine participating categories, male, female and mixed in their different versions, there was no Spanish victory, but there were five podiums.
Absolute winners of the 48th edition,
Poland and Italy were the ones that demonstrated the most power. The Poles took the two special trophies, the Manel Albalat Trophy for the best Olympic crew went to Hanna Rogowska from ILCA 6 Women, and the Girona Diputació Trophy for the best youth crew went to Szymon Kolka and Bartoz Zmudzinski, from the class 29er.
Rogowska arrived in Palamós having been fourth in the last ILCA 6 Youth European Championship, and was confirmed in the Christmas Race as the best in this category. Something similar happened with Kolka and Zmudzinski, who this year have joined forces in the 29er class after a season spent competing with other teammates. They established themselves as the best in 29er in a fleet where Polish crews ruled from start to finish. Antonina Puchowska and Alijca Dampc, world runners-up, were the winners of the Christmas Race in the women’s category, challenging their compatriots Kolka and Zmudzinski for first place on the podium. In the women’s 29er, the Canary Islands Inés Martín-Urda and Natalia Méndez shone with their own light, taking second place on the podium, behind Puchowska and Dampc. It was undoubtedly a good debut for the 29er, who will have the second stop of the EuroCup 2025 circuit in February in Valencia.
Light winds have been the protagonists of this edition.
Italy dominates in 420
And if the 29er had a Polish color, the 420, with 109 boats in the fray, had a clear Italian color with Spanish touches. The transalpine crews took nine of the top ten places in the classification at times. Italy took the first two places on the podium both in the men’s/mixed category, with Alessio Cindolo and Sara Valente, and Nicolas Margaria and Edouardo Cavero, and in the women’s category, with the sisters Giulia and Flavia Schultze, and Ludovica Pastorino and Sara Derin Bottero. Third places went to two Spanish crews, the Catalans Maria Blanco and Alex Camps and the Balearic Islands Neus Fernández and Marta Gomila.
In the two individual classes, ILCA 6 and ILCA 4, everything was more distributed. In ILCA 6 Men there was a great fight between the winner, the Swiss Ulysse Raison, and the Italian Rayene El Hadadi, with the Catalan Guillem de Llano finishing third. In women, Rowoska was accompanied on the podium by the Ukrainian Sofiia Naumenko and the Swiss Viktoria Jedlinska.
In ILCA 4 many sailors arrived at Christmas who just one or two years ago left the Optimist behind, such as the male winner, the Argentine Bruno Römer, who was the great sensation in Palamós, leader from start to finish. Second was the Catalan Joan Camats, who was always in podium positions. The women’s category was also productive, and although the Swiss Leanne Turrin did not give any option, second place was Spanish, for the Catalan Mireia Garriga.
It has been a high-level 48th Palamós Christmas Race, where the best crews from the different strategic classes have demonstrated their worth to jump into Olympic sailing in the future. Palamós has once again been the great laboratory for sailors who will soon feed classes such as the ILCA 7, 470, 49er and FX; in addition to ILCA 6 Women.
Looking ahead to the next edition, the return of the Europe class is scheduled, which has been part of the Christmas Race program both in its Olympic stage (which ended in 2000) and later as a strategic class and of which the champion from Spain for the last two editions is Ramon Figueras, sailor from the Club Nàutic Costa Brava-Vela Palamós. In this category, Spain has had numerous medalists and world champions throughout history, such as Natàlia Via-Dufresne, José Carlos Frau, Gerard Marín, Jesús Rogel, Sven Stadel, Elisabeth Llargués and Pau Schildt, among many. others.
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