The Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli sailors have already made history. The Italian team, led by Giulia Conti, has become the first winner of the Women's America's Cup, a historical debt owed by this sporting competition, the oldest in the world and one of the most internationally far-reaching, only behind the football World Cups and the Olympics. It has been in Barcelona where something has started to move.
Since 1995, no woman had participated in the competition. Throughout the more than 170 years of America's Cup history, female sailors have been present, but only sporadically. In this 37th edition, more than 70 athletes, many of them Olympians, have been able to participate in the Puig Women's America's Cup, with 12 teams competing and gaining experience, a first step towards equality, which until now has been absent from the America's Cup.
Luna Rossa competed this Saturday against the British team, the Athena Pathway Women's Team, led by Hannah Mills. They reached the final very evenly matched, with the score tied at 27 points in the semifinal, where the local team, Sail Team BCN, was just three points short of qualifying. On a rainy day, the Italians prevailed over the British, taking home the prize designed by the Asturian designer and architect Patricia Urquiola, who is based, precisely, in Italy. In parallel, this Saturday saw the start of the final of the men's version of the America's Cup, between the British and New Zealanders, but that competition already occupies most of the headlines every day.