At the end of the 1996 Games, Olimpia is born, a beautiful baby girl, blonde like her mother, who took up all of Theresa's time. It was then that she decided to withdraw from the competition and commit herself to the sea in order to give back part of what it had given her.
On March 3, 1999, the Ecomar Foundation was born and began to dedicate herself to it in body and soul. It's motto "Take care of the only two places you can never move from: your body and your planet" defines the philosophy of the Foundation. From that moment on the foundation has only grown in size and reach, raising awareness among more than 15,000 children every year and taking care of our seas. Today Ecomar is a reference for the care of our seas, educating and raising awareness to achieve a better planet.
Theresa Zabell Lucas made her first contact with the sea she she was only a few months old, when the Zabell family had to emigrate to the Canary Islands from England on a cruise for the head of the family's professional reasons. There she met the blue, smelled it and tasted it, leaving in her retina the image of what had to be a "Sea in Blue".
Soon after, the Zabell family took up residence in Fuengirola (Malaga) and it was there that Theresa, at the age of ten, one and a half metres tall and weighing fifty kilos, embarked for the first time on a sailing boat. As she says "I was colder in the sea than in my whole life" but four years later, she was almost an expert in the European Class and went on to win the World Class in La Rochelle in 1985. She began her Olympic career when an unfair federal decision left her out of the Seoul 88 Games, despite having won the qualification. The Federation handpicked Adelina González and Patricia Guerra to represent Spain in those Games.
Theresa thought of leaving everything behind and spent a year living in England disconnected from sailing, but encouraged by her family she decided to try the Olympic adventure once again at the Barcelona Games. From then on, two Olympic gold medals (Barcelona 92 with Patricia Guerra and Atlanta 96 with Begoña Vía-Dufresne), five World Championships and three European Championships adorn the most successful sporting record of Spanish sailing with countless Spanish Championships and once being proclaimed best sailor in the world by the International Sailing Federation.