Ryan Breymaier (left) and Boris Herrmann received the main communications award from the Barcelona World Race. Image copyright Joan Roca.
by Andi Robertson
The Communication Awards for the Barcelona World Race recognised the brilliant task carried out by the IMOCA skippers in the diffusion of the regatta among the general public. The evening was rounded off with the prize giving ceremony for the 2010 IMOCA World Championships.
The 2010 IMOCA World Championship party was held Friday night at Barcelona's Luz de Gas concert hall. The evening also revealed the winners of the Barcelona World Race Communication Awards and was rounded off by the prize giving ceremony for the top three entries in the 2010 IMOCA World Championships.
The celebrations kicked off with the Communication Awards for the Barcelona World Race, in recognition of the teams who sent the best multimedia material through to the race organisers from on board their yachts during the race. The prizes were divided into four categories: radio, text, photos and videos, with four finalists in each category.
The judges included the Barcelona World Race communications team and four leading media figures: Jacint Felip, Deputy Director of Radio Nacional de España in Catalunya; Suso Pérez, editor of the newspaper la Vanguardia, la Vanguardia Magazine and lavanguardia.es; Didier Ravon, Editor in Chief of Voiles et Voiliers; and Víctor Lavagnini, Sports Editor for TV3 Televisió de Catalunya.
The night's big winners were Ryan Breymayer and Boris Herrmann, and the Neutrogena Fórmula Noruega team, who picked up prizes for their photographic and videographic work. The radio category award went to MAPFRE with Iker Martínez and Xabi Fernández, for their interventions in the daily public videoconferences. Estrella Damm with Pepe Ribes and Alex Pella took the award in the text category for their emails describing life on board their entry.
During the ceremony some of the work by the finalists was projected or read out. Other entries were also highlighted for the quality of their multimedia material: Virbac-Paprec 3, We Are Water and Mirabaud in the photographic category; Neutrogena, GAES Centros Auditivos and Groupe Bel in the text category; Estrella Damm, Foncia and We Are Water in the radio category; and GAES Centros Auditivos, Renault Z.E. and Estrella Damm in the video category.
President of the Fundació Navegació Oceànica Barcelona, the organisers Barcelona World Race, Pere Alcober, thanked all of the skippers for their exceptional efforts in sharing their experiences with the general public: “This is fundamental to the Barcelona World Race philosophy and we will continue to encourage this interactive communication. We will continue to invest our efforts in communications technologies, technologies which help us to explain this fascinatingly complex sporting feat of sailing around the world. Above all we will seek to share common values in the best possible way”. Alcober closed with a warning: “Start getting ready for the 2014 edition, because you have set the bar very high indeed. We are sure you can surpass it”.
With the Communication Awards out of the way, the 2010 IMOCA World Championships prize giving ceremony began, hosted by the IMOCA class President Luc Talbourdet. The gala evening was the climax of the General Assembly for the class, held over two days in Barcelona.
One by one the top ten ranking skippers in the championships stepped up to the stage to be recognised for their progress in the IMOCA circuit regattas over the past two years. Talbourdet awarded third place to Spain's Pachi Rivero. The prize for the runners up in the World Championships when to Alex Pella and Pepe Ribes, and was awarded by Pere Alcober. Marc Guillemot, the top skipper from 2009, handed over to Jean-Pierre Dick, the brand new IMOCA 2010 World Champion, who thanked all of his team, who have helped him reach the very top level of offshore sailing.
Barcelona World Race
