Aier Fernández de Bobadilla at the RCN Palma facilities.

The Real Federación Española de Vela (RFEV) has appointed Aier Fernández (Bilbao, 1972) a new director of Olympic preparation, a position that will have under its responsibility the areas of coordination of coaches, as well as of operations and of the interdisciplinary committee created to support the national regatists who enter the race for representing Spain at the Olympic Games in Tokyo '2020.

The bilbaine technician based in Ibiza, Olympic diploma in Barcelona '92 in the category of board and director of the school of sailing of Formentera, where a promising generation of national windsurfers, champions on European and world dates, has formed, assumes the place of Olympic director as "a great professional challenge and aware of the responsibility that this entails."

In line with the new RFEV Board of Directors, Aier Fernández believes that it is necessary to open the sports model to young people who have been forgotten despite having a lot of talent. "You have to bet on a system that offers possibilities to all those regatists who have proved to be very good but who so far did not have the possibility to access the Olympic team."

As for the preparation methodology, Fernandez understands that we have to "change the course" and implement what he calls "the total systematization of training and logistics" by comprehensive control of everything that affects the performance of a sportsman, from the hours he has sailed, with what winds, the state of the material or his long-term competition program.

"We must have a tool that will allow us to have an absolute knowledge of what is being done and which, unfortunately, does not now exist," says Aier Fernández, who promises "a lot of effort, dedication and professionalism" in the task of making the Spanish team arrive in Tokyo in a position to obtain medals and be among the best in the world.

The election of Aier Fernández has been adopted by the Olympic Preparation Committee, whose responsibility is José María Van der Ploeg (gold in Barcelona '92) and of which Joaquín González Devesa, José Antonio Antón, Paul Depoorter and José Luis Doreto (gold in Seul' 88) are part.

RFEV President Julia Casanueva was "very excited" with the configuration of the human team that will manage the Olympic career in Tokyo. "We have managed to gather experience and youth, and in the coming months we will already begin to implement the new sports model of the federation, based on professionalism and management criteria that will serve us to select the best representatives of our sailing in the next Olympic Games," Casanueva says.