The Sailing Tour of Italy RasCup started the 1st of July from Cervia and it will finish the 29th of July in Piombino. The fleet is made up of seventeen G34 One Design boats and it will undertake a series of regattas that will cover an overall 2200 km along the Italian coasts. There will be 20 laps and the day following the arrival of the fleet each location will host a local regatta. Laps will reach the following places: Cervia (1/7), Pescara (4/7), Bisceglie (7/7), Crotone (11/7), Messina (14/7), Salerno (17/7), Sorrento (18/7), Terracina (20/7), Anzio (22/7), Castiglione della Pescaia (25/7) e Piombino (28-29/7).

What is a Sailing Tour?
It is an itinerant sailing event. The boats in the competition are all the same, they belong to a company and we manage them. They are chosen by lot and entrusted to crews formed by six people for each boat that can alternate up to an unlimited number of times. So, crews change and those who have the longest reserve have a better chance of getting a good placement because the event lasts a substantial amount of time, about 30 days with transfers and local laps, it is hard and very physically demanding. In the end there will be a play-off, in Piombino, with a direct elimination match for the first four boats, as with the America's Cup.

Who are the crews made up by?
They are Italian sailors who arrive from the Sailing circles and they are made up by a crew chief who is in touch with the sponsor. Exactly like in football teams: there is a coach, a manager and there is a trainer who can be both inside and outside the boat, the skipper.

What has changed in sailing from when you started till today?
A lot, it is like asking a Formula One racer what has changed compared to 40 years ago. We were almost pioneers, we were sailors too but now everything is specialised, everything is better, everything is directed towards the result. We were much more roaming and dilettantes.

More artist-like, perhaps?
Definitely, because we had a lot more time to look around and see other things too, beyond the competitor who was passing ahead of us.

Concerning doping, have there been any cases during the regattas?
I remember twenty years ago a Brazilian boat that raced in England and we said that it was doped because they smoked joints, but we also said that as a bit of a joke. I have never known about serious cases, doping is hard to accept from the sailing competitors, because on a boat you can never lose control of yourself, you just need one false step to jeopardise your life and that of your crew.

As with all the sports, sailing lives with sponsors too, what are the compromises you have to accept?
In sailing chance and fortune count a lot. They say that the wind is like women and the moon, nobody can think they can break them or retain them. The wind can help someone who is not sponsored win or one who is, usually the best ones win, but not necessarily. You always must explain to sponsors the risks they must face, you have to explain that the wind dictates the conditions.

Are there any episodes you remember in particular?
I do not tell these and anyway they hardly come to my mind, I would have to make an effort of memory. I prefer episodes which are yet to come.