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Aruba, an island in the Caribbean Sea, 25 kilometers north of Venezuela. Aruba, barely 100,000 inhabitants in a territory smaller than El Hierro. Aruba, almost all beach, the thermometer stopped at 28 degrees, mixture of a thousand cultures. Aruba, the lowest unemployment and the highest per capita income in its area. Aruba, a paradise. Imagine being a girl in Aruba. "It was super cool, at school we left at one o'clock in the afternoon and we had time to go to the beach, play sports, live life. In addition, there were people from many countries and I spent the day changing languages," recalls Nicole Van Der Velden, an Aruban sailor naturalized Spanish in search of a medal for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Born in Madrid in 1994, the story of how it took 25 years to obtain a passport forces her to travel the world, to travel a lot, from Spain to Suriname, from Suriname to Margarita Island and finally from Margarita Island to Aruba. A childhood that would have made Phileas Fogg himself dizzy.

RICARDO PINTOSAIL GP

"My father worked in a multinational that had offices in various parts of the world and every three years they changed him, until he set up his own company in Aruba. Then I was eight years old and I lived there until I was 18," recalls Van der Velden, whose father is Dutch and a Venezuelan mother. "Although I was born in Madrid, I spent a very short time here as a child and my parents never asked for a passport. I got Dutch from my father, which was the one I used in Suriname and Aruba, and the Venezuelan from my mother, which I used on Margaret Island. To get the Spanish first I had to spend a year living here, "says the sailor with the papers already prepared.

Since 2019 she is a Spanish citizen and, for a few months, part of the Spanish team in SailGP, the Formula 1 of water, and one of the two representatives of the country in the iQFoil category, the windsurf boards with wings that in Paris 2024 will debut as an Olympic specialty. She is ninth in the world ranking, in battle for the Spanish place with Pilar Lamadrid, also among the best.

Life in Spain and SailGP

"I've been windsurfing since I was a kid. My father sailed a lot and when we settled in Aruba he bought a catamaran and encouraged me to get into windsurfing lessons. At first I had a terrible time because I didn't like it, but in the end I was very hooked and I'm still here," says Van der Velden who, for the first time, is looking for a ticket to the Games exactly in his own way. Before the age of 22 she made history for Aruba by qualifying for Rio 2016 in the Nacra class – the first Aruban with an Olympic place on her own merits – and at the age of 26, already as a Spaniard, together with Patricia Suárez, she failed in her attempt to be in Tokyo 2020 in 49er FX.

The decision to compete for Spain, he says, was born from the desire to return to the country where he was born and to be part of a large selection, with means, such as the magnificent Specialized High Performance Sailing Center of Santander. "I was very motivated to be in a structure like that, I'm delighted," she says, although she has had to pay: the cold.

BOB MARTINSAILGP

"I've known the cold since I've lived in Santander. When I returned to Spain after the Rio Games is when I really knew what temperatures are in winter in Europe and in other parts of the world. Before, I had been concentrating outside Aruba, but always looking for hot places to sail, "says Van der Velden who, between Olympic competitions, tries to make Spain save the season in SailGP. With only one competition pending, the Grand Final, which will be played in San Francisco on May 6 and 7, the team seeks to avoid the last place in the classification, which is now discussed with Switzerland.

The sailor started last year as a substitute for the competition, helping several teams here and there, and now she is a fixture of the Spanish team, as a strategist, behind the pilot, giving information to him about the other boats, the crossings, what happens on the race course. "I have learned and grown a lot," confesses the sailor who speaks multiple languages, including Papiamento, the official language of Aruba, which mixes Spanish, Portuguese, the indigenous Arawak language and various African languages. What I said: Aruba, a paradise. Imagine being a girl in Aruba.

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