Hippocampus Edição 37

beach, we put the little boat in the water and
went out rowing. Until, one day, we took my
mother’s beach tent and took it with us. We
went to the other side of the bay, opened the
beach tent and returned ‘sailing’.
From then on, it was a sequence of comings
and goings with this tent as a sail. So the
following Christmas, my father built a mast,
put stays and a bowline in the boat, and my
mother made a sail from a sail of an old boat.
And so our rowing Optimist became a sailing
Optimist. And thus, we truly began sailing”.
Those were the beginnings. But in the meantime,
and with advancements and setbacks in
the middle, the involvement with sailing was
such that it resulted in a brilliant sporting career.
Even if, in the beginning, nothing could have
predicted it. “It’s true. Some time later, my
father bought another boat, a Snipe, a class
that everyone knows well, but which was
very big for me and my brother: we couldn’t
dominate the boat, and our activity together
in sailing slowed down a bit. On the other
hand, shortly after my father bought this
Snipe, I also had to concentrate on my studies,
because I had always had the dream of
entering engineering college, and the one that
was free was very demanding and selective,
as was the preparatory school. Since I had to
study a lot, I left sailing a bit aside”.
THE ADVENTURE STARTED IN PENGUIN
Thus, it was in the Penguin class that Gastão
Brun achieved his first great sporting achievements:
“If my brother always kept sailing,
since he didn’t have the same dedication to
his studies, he was more ‘loose’, I would only
return to sailing regularly when I was about
16/17 years old. And I did it in Penguin, a
class that had a great impact all over Brazil,
and also, of course, in Rio de Janeiro, having
been introduced to the country by a famous
Star sailor, called Roberto Bueno.
And it was then that I and my former sailing
partner, Arthur Falk, with whom I still have
connections today, started training a lot,
more seriously and in several places, from São
Paulo to Rio Grande do Sul. In 1960 we won
the Rio de Janeiro Championship; in 1961
we were Penguin World Champions. And
it was there that I started my racing career
in a more committed and assiduous way”.
But not yet in a fully dedicated way... “It is a
fact. Since, in the meanwhile, I joined the
engineering course, I didn’t have much time
available again. But then I ended up competing
in Laser and Star, I also made a career
in those two classes, even if Star is perhaps
the boat I like the most, a boat to which I
dedicated a good part of my life, in which
I was an American champion - in short, in
which I achieved a series of successes.
But my greatest successes have been achieved
together with my brother Vicente, in the
Soling class. It was an Olympic class, which,
I do not know why, was eliminated from
the Olympics, starred by a boat developed
by the Norwegians. And in Brazil there was
a Norwegian who brought the Soling class
there a long time ago, and I bought one of
those boats.
From then on, my brother and I started
training a lot on that boat, we started to
develop sails, I even got a job for him in a
sailing shop in the USA, and we began to
always stay in the Top 5 of the class in any
race or championship we participated in.
And that also because we developed our
own sails, he was very talented in that area.
We won the World Cup in 1978 and 1981,
and we did not win the other World Cups
in which we participated because of minor
failures or errors, because we did not have
a support structure as developed as other
teams. For example, in Puerto Rico we
were disqualified because we spent the
whole afternoon trying to race, but the
wind kept changing and the race committee
intervened until, at some point, conditions
improved, and we took a sail and asked a
support boat that was passing by to take it,
which they would then return when we got
to land. And some people protested as if it
was external aid...
Anyway, we were very fast. The boat and the
crew. My brother and I always got along very
well, he opted for professionalism, entered
the Hall of Fame, competed in the America’s
Cup. Today he is a professional coach”.
LIFE CHOICE
Still active, Vicente Brun is not only one of the
most awarded Brazilian sailors of all times,
but also one of the most respected names in
sailing in the world. Among other achievements,
he has won the World and European
Star Championships, the North American
and South American Soling Championships
(three times) and was an Olympic sailor with
his brother Gastão in 1976 and 1980, competed
in the America’s Cup and has been a member
of the Hall of Fame of sailing since 2018. A
remarkable journey, but still insufficient to
lead his older brother in the same direction: “I
never wanted to get involved in sailing on a
professional level. I had all the possibilities
to do it, but I had my career, I wanted to be
an entrepreneur, and I was an entrepreneur,
holding several large companies in Brazil.
I never really liked this professional side of
sailing, I always sailed when I was part of
crews motivated by friendship. For example,
I sailed several times with Patrick Monteiro
de Barros, namely in Spain, we were Vice-
-Champions of the World in Finland, and
I was the only non-professional on board -
and the same happened when I sailed with
Eduardo Souza Ramos. Friendship was
always the main motivation. And that, for
me, is good, also because it gives me much
more freedom, I am not employed by anyone,
but a good friend of the people with whom
I sailed and sail”.
And with so many titles on the table, there is
nothing that saddens you not to have achieved?
“I have never won an Olympic medal, despite
the speed to which I referred. For example,
in Tallinn, now the capital of Estonia, at the
1980 Olympic Games in the former Soviet
Clube Naval de CASCAIS 87