Sometimes 44Cup teams go well beyond amateur owner-drivers sailing with their elite level pro-am crews. In 2023 the RC44 class amended its rules governing each team’s crew weight to encourage them to include youth and female sailors. For 2024 Torbjörn Törnqvist’s Artemis Racing is going a step further in using their RC44 team as a platform to train up sailors from the Swedish teams competing in this year’s Unicredit Youth And Puig Women's America's Cup in Barcelona. 

Törnqvist’s son Markus, who has been part of Artemis Racing’s crew for several years, and is also part of the Swedish Youth America’s Cup team, was joined in Puerto Calero by fellow squad members Rasmus Alnebeck, Felicia Fernström, Hugo Christensson and Oscar Engström.

All are accomplished sailors aged 22-24, with Hugo coming from Stockholm and the rest from the Gothenburg area where they have had the opportunity to be part of the Swedish Sailing Association’s Lerums seglargymnasium, one of two elite sailing academies in Sweden aimed at creating medal-winning Olympic sailors. 

For example, Felicia, 22, started in the Optimist dinghy albeit “quite late” she admits, but then graduated up to the 29er youth skiff when she began attending the school. Then she moved into match racing and the new iQFOIL foiling windsurfer, featuring in this year’s Paris Olympics. When the opportunity presented itself to be part of the Swedish team for the Youth and Women’s America’s Cup, Felicia, like her colleagues, transferred to the Waszp (a simpler, one design version of the foiling Moth, singlehanded dinghy). Her top results have including a second at the 29er Nordic Championship and podiuming twice in the Swedish Youth Match Racing Championship. 

Being a talented young female sailor, Felicia has the advantage of being in the running not just for the Sweden Women’s America’s Cup team, but their Youth team too. 

Helmsman Oscar Engström and his match racing mainsheet trimmer/tactician Rasmus Alnebeck have sailed with or against each other for all their sailing lives. While they have entered top level events on the World Match Racing Tour, both have considerable extra experience: Rasmus for example had his own Olympic aspirations in the ILCA 7 (Laser) class, ultimately became the training partner in the ILCA 6 (Laser Radial) for Josefin Olsson, who won silver in Tokyo. He was also part of Johnnie Berntsson’s team which finished fourth in the World Match Racing Tour Final in China in December and for a long time crewed for M32 catamaran boss Håkan Svensson in his Cape Crow Vikings team. 

In fact it was he and Engström who originally established the Swedish challenge for the Youth America’s Cup. Since then it has gone from strength to strength. As he puts it: “We started the whole thing in Sweden and obviously when Artemis got involved, all the dreams came true…” 

The Artemis Academy was set up last August and initially 120 sailors were selected. This has since been reduced to 10 men and 10 women by the team’s selection panel with training taking place on their eight Waszps and the sailor’s own Moths. On Artemis’ simulators (albeit a more modest desktop version rather than the team’s full scale F50 simulator) they have got to experience the four person AC40. Final selections to establish the six youth and six women’s sailors for the Swedish teams will take place on 21 April. 

All acknowledge that the RC44 with its displacement hull and relatively large crew of nine, bears little resemblance to the fully foiling AC40 they will be racing off Barcelona over September-October. However Rasmus, who raced on board the RC44 last year, says: “To be honest this is more in line with what I prefer doing and what I do best. Obviously what we are doing with the AC is completely different because everything is data-driven and it is more about being good at a video game rather than having the feeling for the boat, etc. Whereas this is pure sailing.

“For a monohull, it is fun, especially in weather like we have now - 20+ knots downwind. There’s a lot of tension in the ropes. It is a boat where there’s still a physical part, which is really important. There’s not a single role on board which doesn’t involve your muscles. And when it is lighter it sails like a dinghy. And you have eight other guys on board you need to be synchronised with. If you are not all moving at the same time, the whole moment is wasted.”

But it is not just about the sailing, Rasmus continues: “Sometimes you forget it - then you realise ‘I am sitting next to Iain Percy or Stu Bettany who has done seven America’s Cups!’ Just to be around them, being like a sponge, just sucking in everything you can is valuable. 

“Culturally there is not that much difference between the AC40 and the RC44: It is hard work, everyone pitches in and contributes in different ways and that is the culture we want to set inside the Swedish challenge. Look at today we started racing at 0930 and at 0630 down at the boat washing it. It is a great privilege.” 

Felicia agrees: “Even though it is not like the AC40, the angles the RC44 sails at are impressive - they go so high! It is very good to see how a big team operates and how it is when you are nine people on board, how the communication works and people work together; the debriefs and finding the right modes. It is really good to be here and see all that. I like these boats where you have your job and you have to be really focussed on getting everything perfect for that. I also like that it is quite physical.”

“The racing is very close, which is exciting,” says Hugo Christensen, who comes from a background in the high performance Olympic 49er skiff and the foiling Nacra 17 catamaran. He attempted a full scale Olympic campaign in the 470 for the Swedish team before moving on to the Moth to train for the Swedish AC Youth Team. “For me the most valuable thing about being here is getting the knowledge transfer from these old Cup sailors and Olympians and being exposed to them and seeing how everyone operates. We get to talk with them, we have dinner with them and attend the debriefs, which is cool.” 

Oskar Engström, like Rasmus, has wide experience but is best known as a match racer having finished second at the Youth Match Racing World Championship in 2022 and been part of the World Match Racing Tour in 2023. “The fun thing about RC44 racing is that it is so tight around the course - a matter of metres if you are crossing or not crossing. When we sail a Moth – if you miss a tack, which happens quite often, that is a race loser. Here it is a slightly easier boat to sail and the speed differences aren’t that big.” He adds that while he likes being at the design cutting edge with the AC40 sailing at such high speeds on a boat that is hard to sail, this does come at the expense of conventional yacht racing tactics, which the RC44s provides. 

Otherwise he agrees with Christensen. “It is such good preparation to be here with all these professional sailors and seeing how they run a campaign, because it will be similar for us, working long days, fixing stuff, everyone having their tasks.”

This week in fact none of the four youth sailors are racing on board Artemis Racing but this will change at future events, according to whether Torbjörn Törnqvist and his son Markus are able to compete. As Rasmus puts it: “I am here on stand-by and whenever there are opportunities, I am ready to grab them whenever I came. If you want to have a career in sailing this is one of the classes you need to try and get into.”