Lake Garda - Sport & outdoor

Training and preparation for America’s Cup.

Interview with Jacopo Plazzi Marzotto - Part 2

How do you prepare for America’s Cup? How long does training take? Please tell us about the technical, physical, emotional, and psychological levels: there are long periods away from home. Tell us more.

Let’s start from the bottom – basically, you won’t be at home anymore. Home becomes the place where you work, first Cagliari then Auckland, and yes, that is a lot to give up. It’s what everyone has to be ready for. People who work in the cup either move their family, or agree to see them less. So, certainly from the emotional and psychological point of view, this impact must be considered before jumping into such a project.

America’s Cup is a very long and certainly unique project because it lasts 4 years – which immediately become three because before you can even start to sail, one year has already passed, at least for us sailors or in any case for the members of the sailing team. For designers, on the other hand, the project starts from day one and it is a very special project because for almost 3 years you train, develop, and never compete.

Compared to an Olympic campaign, during which you compete continuously and therefore have ongoing reality checks, America’s Cup is a project where you spend time in the darkness, except for some ‘espionage’ to understand the work of the other teams, and where you are at in relation to your competitors. The reality is that until you compare yourself to others, you don’t know.

In this particular case, the first opportunity was just before the regattas, because due to Covid, we were unable to meet the crews before America’s Cup. On a technical level, there’s continuous development that does not stop even during the regattas, it is really is something unique!

That’s because on other boats, you reach a certain technical level and with that you face the regatta, trying to perform with what you have, but in America’s Cup you can’t! You have to keep improving even while you compete so there is a lot of work.

On a physical level, it is better to ask the grinders, it is certainly very demanding. Preparation is similar to physical sports – it must start way in advance and look both at optimizing physical performance, and at preserving the sailors so that they do not get hurt during the course of the campaign. This could jeopardize the outings at sea, hours in the water that are essential to obtain the best possible performance.