America’s Cup spy: Barceloneta desert sand and Italian sailor superstar on Swiss TV

If you want to know all about the America’s Cup in Barcelona and what’s happening at sea, don’t miss our Trial of the Cup and all the news in our “The Cup Newspaper” section.
But if you want to know what goes on behind the scenes of the America’s Cup circus, in the hidden corners of the bases, envies and friendships among sailors, good deeds and snubs, gossip, here you are in the right place.

America’s Cup Spy

Our Barcelona correspondent Ida Castiglioni tells you everything no one else is telling you.
Here is “Spy America’s Cup,” follow it every day!

• Spy America’s Cup, the first installment (a 100-foot Alinghi)
• Spy America’s Cup, the second installment (adieu fromage!).
• Spy America’s Cup, the third installment (Soldini in the Cup?).
• Spy America’s Cup, the fourth installment (Mr. INEOS’s megayacht)
• Spy America’s Cup, the fifth installment (food and wine tips)

Why that dark sand?

History of Barceloneta Beach. The district of Barceloneta was born in the urban structure that distinguishes it from the rest of the city with the urban intervention of the 1700s and is characterized by buildings, which were inhabited by those who worked by the sea, gathered around pedestrian streets and lanes, perpendicular to each other, with the large market square in the center.
In 1986, in the run-up to the 1992 Olympic Games, the Spanish central government with 37 percent, the Generality of Catalonia with 18 percent, and the City of Barcelona with 17 percent financed a plan to meet the demands of the C.I.O. The final cost was more than $2 trillion greatly exceeding the planned budget.
The implementation of this visionary project led, over the next two decades, to the development of Barcelona and the city’s tourism boom.
A really well-positioned city, where there is always wind, with a large territory behind it and a port that is always protected.

The Barcelona City Council, in preparation for the Olympic event, launched one of the largest urban redevelopment plans with a series of interventions on the fabric of the central area in order to build the facilities in the city.
The municipality presented and implemented a major urban plan, which included the construction of an entire district to house the athletes and the new marina that would become the Olympic harbor.
The plan called for the environmental rehabilitation of the coastal strip of Poblenou (several kilometers) with the demolition of old industrial structures that alternated with brownfield areas, and that of Barceloneta, which until then had always been the outlet to the sea for the fishermen who had lived there for centuries and continued with the long piers protecting its historic port.
In the part of Barceloneta that faced the sea everything was expropriated and razed to the ground: modest dwellings, warehouses, shelters, ancient piers and fishermen’s mooring areas.
Everything was leveled to a depth of up to a hundred meters.
Long wide promenades were created, and squares then paved with stone, while the seashore was all cemented over.
At that point they brought in ships from Egypt loaded with the sand of the Sahara Desert, and the strip between the promenade and the sea was covered with this dark sand.
The result is a beach that in Barceloneta is very narrow, in a light shade of earth, always invaded by thousands of citizens and tourists along its entire length.
If you walk westward from here you trespass on Sant Sebastià beach, frequented by nudists.
If, on the other hand, you go eastward, you arrive at the Olympic Port and further on to Bogatell beach, which is deeper and less crowded.

The Italian sailor who is a Swiss TV star.

Roberto Spata was summoned back to Lugano in a big hurry by the share, which sputtered inexorably upward. Since the start of the semifinals, he is still the one who has been commenting – technically, with great competence and measured words – on the America’s Cup selections for Television delle Svizzera Italiana (RSI).
I used to see him here in Barcelona at the Alinghi base or at the Mixed Zone together with Giordano de Lucia, the sports journalist who covered, among other things, the last Olympics for the Ticinese.
During the Round Robins, but also before, they were on the air every day from 2 to 5:30 p.m., and the program stipulated that they would return to Barcelona only if Alinghi made it to the finals.

But share commands and so Canton Ticino television decided to recall them to continue with this commentary, albeit for the time being from the studios in Lugano.
Roberto, already in 2010 had commented on RSI’s TV network on the Valencia races for the America’s Cup between the only challenger Oracle, with Ellison’s ‘monster’ trimaran led by Spithill, and the defender Alinghi, with the light catamaran, sponsored and helmed by Bertarelli himself.
Spata lives in Como and is one of the foremost experts in tuning racing boats.
He is now project manager of Junda KII and his sporting background includes winning 20 Italian championships, from Fun to Maxi, but he also worked for 12 years at North Sails.
Everyone remembers the time he won the Maxi World Championship with Idea after managing to lower its rating by cutting the bow of the boat by 70 cm.
The new class he is trying to create is a 6-meter displacement monotype for 2 people.
It is made in Lecco in epoxy infusion with some internal parts in carbon: no foil.
It is a design by Umberto Felci for Ludovico Fassitelli, a Lombard entrepreneur who has raced with the J70s.

Spy America’s Cup, all bets

Follow us for more tidbits, trivia and indiscretions from Barcelona in the next installment of Spy America’s Cup.

• Spy America’s Cup, the first installment (a 100-foot Alinghi)
• Spy America’s Cup, the second installment (adieu fromage!).
• Spy America’s Cup, the third installment (Soldini in the Cup?).
• Spy America’s Cup, the fourth installment (Mr. INEOS’s megayacht)
• Spy America’s Cup, the fifth installment (food and wine tips)