The Formentera Council (CiF) Office of Sport is proud to announce that the third annual De Far a Far – a 26km walk/footrace whose name, “From Lighthouse to Lighthouse”, refers to the trail – will take place this Sunday, April 10. As CiF sports councillor Jordi Vidal reported, walkers will set out from the Es Cap lighthouse at 9.00 am and runners will start two hours later. Both walkers and runners will follow the same trajectory, finishing in La Mola no later than 2.00 pm. Local sports club Grup Esportiu Espalmador also helped organise the event.

Bus pick-up and drop-off

Vidal stressed that participants must use buses provided by organisers to reach the starting point, which is in a protected area of the island with only limited parking available. Buses will leave La Savina at 7.45 am and 9.30 am, the Antoni Blanc Sports Centre at 8.00 am and 9.45 am and bar Es Cap at 8.15 am and 10 am. After the event buses will be available to take participants back to all three departure points.

Signups

Participants can sign up at www.formenterasport365.com until Friday April 8 at 9.00 pm. At present 250 individuals, both walkers and runners, have registered. Vidal encouraged Formentera residents to take part, underscoring that “this is a trail even non-professionals can do”. Registration (€20 for runners and €15 for walkers) includes a commemorative T-shirt, refreshments, microchip-based tracking, medical assistance, insurance coverage, bus fare and cloakroom service.

Sports councillor Jordi Vidal and Xicu Ferrer, the newly-appointed president of the island's football club (SD Formentera), came together today to announce details of this weekend's youth football (aleví) tournament. The sports trials will take place on the municipal pitch, and, according to Ferrer, organisers are predicting “some of the best youth players in the state”. Among the teams scheduled to take part are València CF, Vila-real, Mallorca, Betis, Málaga and hosts SD Formentera.

As the club's president reported, the initial qualifying rounds of play will get under way Saturday 26 March at ten a.m. The first and second semifinal matches will take place Sunday at ten and eleven, respectively, before the two highest classed teams square off at noon. The third and fourth highest ranked will go head to head at five p.m. and the final match is set for six o' clock that evening.

The sports councillor stressed the importance of the trials for local football and the high caliber of participating teams. He also seized the opportunity to wish the Formentera club's new president his best. For his part, the leader of the tournament's hosting team thanked the Formentera Council and Trasmapi, which helped cover travel costs between Eivissa and Formentera, for having made the event possible. Alex Marí, a representative from the Trasmapi transport company, was also in attendance at the morning presentation.

This Saturday marks the fifth year of the Formentera All Round Trail (FART), a footrace with an expected participation of more than 450. The Formentera Council's head of sports, Jordi Vidal, unveiled details on the event at a press conference this morning. Participation in the FART has grown exponentially since the race first started a few years ago—from 50 runners to nearly 500 today. However, as Vidal pointed out, despite an exploding popularity, the FART is intended for experienced runners only.

The footrace follows a 72.5-kilometre circuit around the Formentera coastline. Runners will set out at 8 a.m. from la Savina. For those who are a bit less experienced, there are two shorter routes as well: the Half Round Formentera Trail, a 40.5-km run that leaves els Arenals at 11:30 a.m., and the Tros de FART (roughly translated as 'a little bit of FART'), which runs 21 km and has participants leaving the starting blocks in Es Caló at one midday. Five refreshment stations will be set up along the routes and all three competitions share a finish line in the la Savina port. The maximum run time is 13, 9.5 and 4 hours respectively. The event is sponsored by the Formentera Council (CiF), the Grup Esportiu Espalmador and Elitechip.

Athletes can sign up to participate at www.elitechip.net until Thursday, 25 February at 8 p.m. Numbers can be picked up in the organisation tent on Friday between 5 and 9 p.m. in la Savina. Also that evening, Pere Serra, a psychologist and specialist in this kind of competition and a specialist group from Eivissa will lead a conference on the so-called 'ultra trails' in general and one such trail in particular: the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc (UTMB). Saturday morning at eight organisers will begin handing out numbers to participants of the two shorter races. Later on, runners will be transported to els Arenals for the Half Round and Es Caló for the Tros de FART.

Vidal thanked all the offices that had played a part in the organisation of this year's race, including the port authority of the Balearic Islands and the Govern Balear ministry of the environment. The councillor also seized the opportunity to highlight the important work of the Formentera local police, the Guardia Civil, civil protection services and other volunteers that have all signed on to ensure the race takes place safely. Saying he hoped everyone «gets into the spirit» and «gets an eyeful of Formentera's beautiful coastline», Vidal gushed about the FART's environmental commitment as well and reminded runners that anyone caught tossing rubbish along the way will be penalised. Also at this morning's presentation were Daniel de la Dueña, CiF department of sport staff specialist, event organiser Vicent Rosselló and Pere Serra.

Formentera Council president Jaume Ferrer and Esperança Camps, minister of community involvement, transparency and culture of the Govern Balear, met today to sign an accord promoting sportsmanship among school children with a programme called Posam Valors a l’Esport (Putting the Sportsmanship in Sport). By signing the deal, the Govern and the Formentera Council (CiF) commit to provisioning the programme with €10,000 and €5,000 in funding, respectively. According to Ferrer, the Council will oversee the initiative, which will cover anything – from outreach and awareness campaigns to training courses – that emphasises good sportsmanship and the other traditional values inherent in sport.

The two officials signed an additional accord laying out the terms of a partnership between the Formentera Council and the Fundació per a l’Esport Balear. The goal of the partnership is to ensure the quality of local sports training. The programme will cover the year 2016, explained Ferrer, and «set in place high standards not only for our trainers but also for our local athletes».

To receive grant money, programme activities must take place between 1 January and 30 November 2016 and can include specific training sessions, travel to specific training sessions, nutrition, sports psychology, physiotherapy and training for sports specialists.

In order to achieve the targets of the partnership, the Council has committed to coming up with a procedure to determine the eligibility of specific programmes and allocate funding; draft a set of criteria for eligible sportsmen and women and trainers; setting up a committee to review applications. The committee will have an oversight role for the different programmes and will ensure proper documentation proving eligibility is provided.

In another move to assure the goals of the partnership are met, the Fundació has committed to contributing technical advice, €10,000 in funding and a staff specialist from the Fundació to serve on the oversight committee.

Councillor of sport Jordi Vidal was also present at the signing of the accord. He explained the subsidies will apply to tennis players as well as participants in athletics and judo. Camps declared her satisfaction at being able to take part in the partnership, a way of chipping away at Formentera’s de facto geographic isolation and promoting sports and sportsmanship