In their quest for gold, Jordi Xammar and Nora Brugman lost silver and bronze. The Spanish crew of the mixed 470 dropped to fourth place in the general classification after a ninth place in the Medal Race, the decisive race contested by the 10 best boats and with double points, held today in La Marina de Marseille. They are the number one in the ranking The team was the world champion in its category, world and European champions, and they were not satisfied with anything other than the maximum Olympic glory. So, they took a risk at the start of the Medal Race by marking the Austrian boat, and the rest of the fleet took advantage of this duel between the favourites to escape. It was enough for Australia, gold ahead of Japan and Sweden, but not for Spain, fourth after that ninth place on Thursday, which is its worst position in all the races.
“We had given everything for these Games. It is a very tough time, but we know that sport also has its difficult side and now we have to live it. We have come out brave because we wanted the gold. It is unfair… our rivals tell us that for them we are the best,” Xammar lamented on the shore. “We are the team that has worked the hardest and that has shown the most this campaign,” added Brugman.
Xammar and Brugman had this day marked between their eyebrows since the Tokyo Games. Literally. One day after winning bronze in the 470 alongside Nico Rodríguez, Xammar called Brugman from the Japanese capital. She had sent him a message to congratulate him, and he took the opportunity to thank her and to propose to her to be a partner in the mixed 470, which was to be launched in Paris. They had known each other since they were children and hardly needed any training. That was where the adventure of these two Barcelona natives, aged 30 and 32, began, which has led to a bitter fourth place due to the good results in this Olympic cycle and their rapport on the waves.
On board, the roles of the crew are very well defined. Jordi is the head of tactics, making decisions when it comes to racing according to wind conditions and the positions of the fleet; Nora is the queen of speed, the technical part. Depending on the moment, one aspect or another weighs more, and so the leadership of the boat goes from one hand to another, and so their physical training is different, more physical for her, more aerobic for him. Only Nora goes to the trapeze, hanging from a harness, and her weight is more efficient than her partner’s when it comes to shaking the boat, and that is why she has gone up on the scales while Jordi had to go down in search of that perfect balance between body, mind and strategy on the board. A psychologist has been with them for years, and Jordi also brought in a trainer. mindfulness.
Jordi skipped motorcycling to embrace the sea. His father is Pere Xammar, who was the 250cc Spanish champion and teammate of Sito Pons, and the two families spent their summers together in the Balearic Islands, and curiously there Pons taught Jordi to swim. “My parents didn’t want me to get into motorcycling, because it was very dangerous. Some friends opened a sailing school and they signed me up there. If I fell, I would fall in the water and not on the asphalt,” recalls Xammar. From the first day on the waves he sailed alone in the optimist. Nora has been sailing since she was three years old, ever since her father, an American hockey player, and mother a skier, bought a small boat for the two sisters in the summers in Planes. Brugman competed for the United States since 2016, when she moved to San Francisco to live with her sister, and tried to qualify for Tokyo. He was on the verge of making it and it was then, after those Games, when he received that call from Jordi with a view to Paris.
In Marseille they set up their base camp in 2022, first in a house rented by the Federation, then in another apartment. The coexistence has been extreme on and off the boat. “It helps us a lot that we have known each other since we were little, sailing together since we were juniors. The complicity already existed before. Now we are like brothers, we have a special trust,” says Nora. “We also argue! And if not, it would be boring,” says Jordi; “if we have not argued for a long time, we find a way. We work together 22 days a month, all day, with a very high level of intensity. It is easy not to argue and there are teams that you see and do not argue, but I think they camouflage reality. When the regatta arrives, you have to put in a level of intensity that if you have not trained before, you perform less. For that you have to have that level every day. Nora and I argue in training. When we compete, we do not. We demand 110% from each other, that there can be no mistakes, so as not to fail in the competition.”
Nora talks about Jordi as “the hardest-working and most demanding person in detail, tireless, always seeking perfection”, and he returns the praise: “The world of competition is cruel, selfish, and Nora is a very good person. She is the partner with whom I have enjoyed the most during the campaign. She is the Spanish sailor of reference”. In Marseille they were not signing up for anything other than gold, and in that search for treasure they ended up opening an empty chest.
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