WATCH: Prestigious Copa del Rey sailing regatta staged at Spain’s holiday island Mallorca postponed due to coronavirus

AFTER 38 years of continuous competition, the 39^th edition of Mallorca’s prestigious Copa del Rey Mapfre sailing regatta has been postponed due to the coronavirus crisis.

🔈 LA 39 #CopaReyMAPFRE SE DISPUTARÁ EN 2021. Tras 38 años ininterrumpidos de competición la 39ª edición se aplaza un año por responsabilidad sanitaria. Más info 👉🏻 https://t.co/9xF8nIyUrq

🇬🇧 THE 39 COPA DEL REY MAPFRE WILL BE HELD IN 2021. Read more 👉🏻 https://t.co/qUZxUAZnrL pic.twitter.com/8X8rlnHZeA

— Copa del Rey MAPFRE (@CopaReyMAPFRE) May 27, 2020

The event, one of the largest sailing competitions in the world, was due to have taken place in the first week of August, but will not now take place until summer 2021.
The organisers took the decision not to go ahead with the regatta this summer for reasons of “health and well-being responsibility.”
Organising committee chairman and Real Club Nautico de Palma president, Emerico Fuster, pointed out the event attracts in excess of 2,000 participants from more than 30 countries and some 3,000 spectators a day, both at sea and on shore. But given the current health pandemic situation and the uncertainty as to how it will evolve, health safety had been “put before any sporting or social interest.”
“For us, both as a club and as an organisation, and after 38 uninterrupted years of celebration, this has been a very hard decision to take,” Fuster commented, while making it clear that the priority, above all else “has always been to guarantee the health of our club members, our employees, the sailors and all the guests of the Copa del Rey Mapfre.”
The committee president said the organisers’ minds are now focused on next year’s regatta, which he expects to be “a special moment that will remind us of the responsibility as a society facing a global health problem which, together, I hope, we will have managed to overcome.”