Cayolla out to wow crowds and ruffle feathers in Portuguese home waters

With five Acts under his belt at the head of the Extreme Sailing Series™' first ever Portuguese team, Diogo Cayolla is a man on a mission.

Friday 23rd September 2016

With five Acts under his belt at the head of the Extreme Sailing Series™’ first ever Portuguese team, Diogo Cayolla is a man on a mission.

Early in 2016, three-time Olympian Cayolla assembled a crew packed full of Portugal’s finest and best known sailors for the country’s debut - and since then they have proved one of the most exciting teams on the global Stadium Racing tour.

Despite being newcomers to the Extreme Sailing Series, and facing the daunting prospect of going up against seasoned teams like Red Bull Sailing Team and Alinghi, Sail Portugal – Visit Madeira have shown flashes of brilliance this season.

With just three Acts remaining, Cayolla’s men lie in sixth place on the overall leaderboard but their campaign is enjoying a timely boost as the Extreme Sailing Series heads to their home waters.

Cayolla’s team get to enjoy two events as the home-town heroes – the first in the Portuguese islands of Madeira this week, and the second in Lisbon in less than two weeks.

“Sailing in front of a home crowd is great,” Cayolla said. “To have all those people supporting you is amazing. We have had a lot of Portuguese fans following us online throughout the season but now they have the chance to see us race first hand, and that’s an incredible thing for us.”

Sail Portugal – Visit Madeira have notched up an impressive 22 podium finishes this season including one race win but the team are determined to up that count before the year is out, especially in front of home crowds.

“There’s a lot of expectation on us as the home team for Madeira and Lisbon,” he said. “We’re a Portuguese team sponsored by Madeira too, so more than ever we’re going to give our best and try to make crowds happy, and the best way of doing that is by winning some races or getting podium finishes.

“At the first event we were learning, we were still a new team putting all the pieces together. Two events ago I started saying to my team that we wanted to start getting podiums and I stick to that. We want to get the maximum podium positions that we can and then at the end of the championship we will see where we are.”

Taming the super-quick foiling GC32 catamarans raced in the Extreme Sailing Series has been a steep learning curve for Sail Portugal – Visit Madeira despite their wealth of experience. But Cayolla is convinced that his expert team are improving with every minute spent onboard the boat – and with a bit more time can be a real force to be reckoned with.

“We are experienced sailors, we know that to get results we need time together, we need to train more and to understand how things work better,” Cayolla said. “We have to be patient and that’s what we’re trying to be. We know if we work in a good way we will get there. We on the boat are seeing ourselves getting better and better but everyone else is noticing it too. We can fight against the best. A lot of teams have been sailing in this Series for five or six years but we can still beat them.”