By Roger DISS

"FAVOURITISM" CHARGE AS SPANISH HERO ROWS ATLANTIC

THE first Spaniard to row alone across the Atlantic was due to arrive in Martinique, West Indies, today, Thursday.
Crowds of proud supporters were waiting to line the dockside in Fort de France to welcome the 41-year-old adventurer as a hero after his 96 days on the 3,000-mile crossing from La Gomera.
But even as he drew near the coast an email of bitter recrimination arrived at the computer of Antonio Padron y Santiago, the man in overall charge of Tenerife maritime affairs, based in Santa Cruz.

It was dispatched by Victor Gavrishev, a wealthy Kyrgyzstan businessman who had been denied permission to leave on the same perilous crossing just 10 days after Mateu’s departure.
He protested that he and Mateu both had identical documentation for the transatlantic row but Mateu was allowed to go while he, Gavrishev, was forcibly towed back to La Gomera, threatened with arrest and fined a total of €60,000 for defying the Capitano de Maritimo’s ban on rowing.
He said: “He (Mateu) violated the law as seriously as I did (if indeed there is any violation at all). His departure was not interrupted, he was not fined and now is successfully finishing in Martinique. Is this because he is Spanish?”
Gavrishev repeated his intention of taking his complaint to the European Court of Human Rights and asked that Padron reply to his lawyer in Tenerife.

Gavrishev’s complaint was fully reported in The Tenerife Sun two issues ago, in which he claimed the refusal to allow his departure had cost him at least €260,000. He has now given up his plan to row from La Gomera, instead aiming to depart next year from Gran Canaria, which does not fall under Capitano Padron’s jurisdiction.
“This is not sour grapes against Mateu,” he told this newspaper yesterday. I sincerely admire his courage and applaud his achievement.
“But Sr Padron needs to learn that he is not entitled to prevent anybody from embarking on an expedition under the international laws of freedom of passage.”

The ban on Gavrishev also netted two other rowers, who have since paid large fines and left on their voyages. But two Britons, Stuart Turnbull and Ed Baylis, who left on the same day, avoided interception and completed their voyage to Antigua on February 21.

Kenneth F. Crutchlow, of The Ocean Rowing Society International, which has supported all the rowers involved, said this week he wondered why Capitano Padron suddenly issued his edict banning all Atlantic rowing bids starting before December 1 and after February 15 on grounds of safety from hurricanes.
The Ocean Rowing Society is in some rivalry with Woodvale Events in organizing Atlantic rowing races and Crutchlow said: “Sr Padron issued his order making it impossible for Gavrishev to leave just the day after he had been visited by representatives of Woodvale.