La Rolex Swan Cup a Porto Cervo

The winners of the 22nd edition of the famous regatta

The Rolex Swan Cup is an event with a prestigious heritage and a unique character. This year's 22nd edition demonstrated how this biennial regatta is always able to evolve and innovate. The enduring relationship between the three partners - Rolex, the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda (YCCS) and Nautor Swan - has been instrumental in building and maintaining the event's enviable reputation.

After the final races, division and class winners were honored for their excellence and consistency on the water during the closing ceremony. Rolex timepieces, awarded to the top performers in their respective divisions, went to: Sea Quill (ITA) in the Maxi/Mini Maxi category, Isabella (GER) in Sparkman & Stephens, Katima (GER) in Grand Prix/Cruiser, and Canopo (ITA) in One Design.

Over five days of racing, the Race Committee skillfully charted a series of challenging courses in the Maddalena Archipelago, despite the increasingly unstable conditions and light winds that characterized the week.

Rolex Swan Cup

The Maxi A Division fleet included 15 Swan yachts, including the largest participant, the 98-foot (29.87 m) Drifter Cube. Success, the result of a perfect series of results, went to the Swan 60 Sea Quill. For skipper and technician Andrea Fornaro, it was an extraordinary achievement: “Winning the Rolex Swan Cup is one of the best feelings of my sailing career. To do it with such a talented crew makes it even more special.”

In contrast to the power and strength of the maxi Swans, Porto Cervo saw the first appearance of the ClubSwan 28, the smallest model ever produced by Nautor Swan and “designed to be smart, fun and fast, but not overly technical to allow an easier entry into the racing world.” The ClubSwan 28 joins a booming and highly competitive One Design program that brings together the ClubSwan 36-a modern homage to the first Swan launched in 1967, the 36-foot (10.97 m) Tarantella-, the ClubSwan42, the Swan 45 and the ClubSwan 50s. In the combined scoring system, victory in the One Design division went to Canopo, a ClubSwan 42, which won six of its seven races.

Rolex Swan Cup

Leonardo Ferragamo, president of Nautor Swan, recalled his participation in the regatta in the early 1990s and the importance of offering owners competitive racing: “The Rolex Swan Cup has always been a benchmark. One of the biggest motivations for me to buy my first Swan yacht was to participate in the Rolex Swan Cup. It is a truly iconic regatta. Today we welcome over a hundred yachts in different categories. Each one has its own scoring system, so in each class everyone competes at a comparable level, and that's important.”

The Rolex Swan Cup 2024 celebrates 40 years of collaboration between Rolex and the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda. The 1984 edition also marked the beginning of the partnership between the Swiss watchmaker and Nautor Swan.

The strong combination of the key relationships among the three event partners, the timeless passion for sailing that characterizes Swan yachts, the strong sense of community, and the assurance of fair and challenging competition in one of the world's most prestigious nautical venues ensures that the Rolex Swan Cup will continue to remain a landmark in the sailing scene for generations to come.