Mini 650 sailor, Hugo Ramón, joins Conrad Colman for GOR

Hugo Ramon joins Conrad Colman as co-skipper on Desafio Mallorca © Jesus Renedo / www.sailingstock.com

Conrad Colman entered the double-handed, round-the-world, Class40 Global Ocean Race 2011-12 (GOR) anonymously in February last year, revealing his identity two months later. Since then, he has been working ceaselessly to ensure he arrives on the GOR’s Palma, Mallorca, startline this September with a potentially victorious campaign. In the past two months, the 27 year-old Kiwi has secured the charter of Jasmine Flyer, a brand new Akilaria RC2 launched at MC-TEC in Tunisia last month, and at a press event in Palma on Thursday, Colman revealed that his co-skipper for the circumnavigation is 26 year-old Mallorcan sailor, Hugo Ramón.

“We’ve done loads of training together already and it’s clear that he’s a very good sailor,” says Colman. “I can honestly say that we’re going to make a great team,” he confirms. Like Colman, Ramón followed the classic path to pro-racing via Optimists and Lasers before, aged 18, he began specialising in solo sailing, entering and winning the 500-mile, single-handed Mare Nostrum Race in the Mediterranean. Aged 20, Ramón was the youngest sailor in the 2005 Mini Transat and, a year later, he was made Spain’s Sailor of the Year before entering the 2007 and 2009 Mini Transats, making him the only Spanish sailor with three, single-handed transatlantic races to his credit.

Ramón also won the Mini Barcelona in 2008 and 2010. Colman, too, has a Mini-racing background: he began racing in the Mini 650 class with good results, culminating with the 2009 Mini Transat where he finished mid-fleet after a series of technical problems and gear failures. Despite the crossover with Ramón in 2009, the duo were virtual strangers until last month. “I remember seeing him in the stop at Madeira,” recalls Colman, “but we just passed on the pontoons and said ‘hello’; nothing more.”

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