Nacra 17 Worlds 2023: Title for Tita & Banti

All images by Sailing Energy / World Sailing

2023 Nacra 17 Worlds for Tita & Banti

Final Day for the 2023 Nacra 17 Worlds which took place at The Hague, NED, gathering all Olympic Classes. No surprise on the Nacra 17 fleet. Ruggero Tita & Caterina Banti dominating 11 bullets including the Medal Race, the usual view only compared to what Besson & Riou did towards Rio 2016.

Second place overall for Tokyo Silver medalists Gimson-Burnett, the british crew always there for the fight.
Third overall for the recent F18 crowned World Champion Emil Jarudd, sailing with Hannah Jonsson. Great to see Emil going from winning the F18 tittle to the Olympics in 2 weeks. Impressive performance in floating and foiling mode.

Another fast team were van der Meer & Bouwer from Netherlands, turbo speed for them in every condition.

This regatta was a key one for the Nacra 17 circuit as it defined the first 9 slots for Paris 2024. Nice to see Tara Pacheco nailing the slot for Spain along new crew Barrio Garcia after so little time together.

Italy put 3 teams in the top ten, they have top performers to spare, basically the Italians team secured a slot for Paris x3 to reduce any chance of error..!

One super power Nation that couldn’t qualify (yet) was Australia. After Jason Waterhouse decided to retire from the Olympic playground (priorizing SailGP / AC), responsibility was left to several young teams.
Australian Fed picked up Bundy to sail with Lisa Darmanin (he was their coach). Bundy knows how to win and foil (top 3 A-Cats) but he still need to adapt to the Nacra 17 mode. 5 Aussies teams at The Hague, best places were for Liddell-Brown and Booth-Booth , 19th & 20th respectively.

The Nations securing their ticket to Paris are 9:

Top 11 with 9 Countries qualified for Paris 2024:

ITA, GBR, SWE, NED, GER, NZL, ARG, FIN & ESP

See results below, complete list here

Lange & ARG internal Qualy for Paris 2024

One of the highlights of this regatta was the Argentine internal and Olympic qualy. Our favorite team, Mateo Majdalani & Eugenia Bosco dominated the 3 scheduled events: Sofia, Hyeres & this Worlds. These 3 regattas were selected to decided who would represent Argentina at the 2024 Games.
This week Mateo & Euge clinched a double prize at The Hague, obtaining the slot for ARG and the airtickets for themselves! Performance which resulted in the retirement of Santi Lange from the Olympic arena.

Lange has an extensive Olympic career, starting with Laser and later Tornado Classic, but it was only when he paired with previous double Silver Olympic (Mistral Windsurf ) Medalist, Camau Espínola that the Olympic podium came Lange’s way. Together they grabbed two Bronze medals in the Tornado Sport (Spi rig) : 2004 and 2008 making Santi a 2x podium holder and Espínola a 4x consecutive medalist for Arg.
After Beijing and with the lame expulsion of the Tornado from the Olympics (Replaced by the Star…) in 2012, Lange did not had a plan to return in 2016.

Meanwhile some young Arg teams started campaigning Nacra 17, most coming from our F18 fleet. Along those sailors former Laser Olympic helm, Cecilia Carranza was entering the Multihull realm. After a season in Europe he parted ways with his crew, and went hunting for Santi Lange’s helm.
She traveled from Rosario to Buenos Aires carrying the N17 behind. With such determination and knowing Ceci’s hard workd spirit Lange got onboard Cecilia’s proposal.

That 2016 campaign was a tough one for them as Santi had to endure and fight lung cancer months before the Games, but he managed to recover and went to Rio!

The first Nacra 17 cycle was marked by the total domination of Besson-Riou (4 Consecutive World Titles), just like Tita & Banti are doing today.
Sadly Billy got a back injury before the Games started giving the N17 fleet an open chance.

Lange-Carranza didn’t looked back. On an epic final race they grabbed Gold for Argentina.
Santi got his 3rd consecutive Multihull Olympic Medal, this time the long awaited Gold, making him a legend on how was achieved and being elder than the rest of the competition.

Mateo & Euge

After Rio 2016, two young sailors formed another promising team, local youth talent helm Mateo Majdalani (skippered first Youth Americas Cup AC45 for Arg and served as Lange support assistant for Rio 2016) and Eugenia Bosco, who had previously raced some Nacra 17 with another F18 sailor. Euge comes from the 29er Arg fleet and started sailing Catamarans with us in the F18 ARG fleet, she also participated in the 2016 Worlds in BA.

Mateo also began racing cats onboard an F18, I remember his first race was on an Infusion we got for him and Pablo Volker (who contended F18 Worlds tittle two weeks ago)

Mateo and Euge had a complicated mission: Try to target Arg slot from 2016 Gold medalists Lange & Carranza. They didn’t received much support (if any ) from local Arg sailing Federation and both had to establish themselves in Europe to be able to gather funds to fund their own campaign.

Tokyo 2020 Cycle

Nacra 17 foiling mode in 2017 Worlds already saw them finishing behind Lange-Carranza. 13th &14th. Quite a start for the rookies showing they deserved due support to help them grow ahead.

Next 2018 Worlds the young team had a fantastic start including two bullets and two 2nds in the qualy series, later some bad results relegated them to a final 15th overall. At the same time Lange & Carranza were fighting for the title., they finished 3rd overall behind Tita-Banti and the Outteridges.

That situation defined the hard path that followed for the new formed team, as they were stop cold on the spot to pursue an Olympic path for that cycle, facing No internal qualy situation vs Lange towards Tokyo 2020.
Lange made them sign a paper right after those 2018 Worlds where Mateo & Euge agreed to relegate any Olympic dream in exchange of some support for them. Is important to note that Lange’s campaign have been financed by the Arg sports gov agency and Arg sailing Fed so it was rather strange that on the beach agreement Mateo & Euge had to sign.

Either way Lange-Carranza were coming from Gold in Rio and finished 3rd that Worlds, they were on the track for more, they had more experience without a doubt.
Still many of us thought if it wasn’t better to let Mateo and Egue compete and push them further as it would have raised both teams level.
Just look at Ugolini-Giubilei now… If they were Argies chances they wouldn’t be racing along Tita & Banti every event as per that 2018 status quo in the Arg squad.

Tokyo 2024 saw Lange at ease on a secired spot and no internal qualy , also no medal for him neither. Upwind foiling mode changed the game plenty. After the event together with Ceci Carranza they decided to end their partnership.

New Hope 2024

Meanwhile Mateo & Euge continued to live abroad by their own trying to gather funds and struggling for support.They slowly began to improve their performance. They did not even had a formal coach at the time. As their overall positions improved they received a little more help from the Arg sailing Federation plus a formal coach later on.
Lange decided to continue to race N17 and got another crew. Talented young 49fx helm (5th 2024 Olympics) Victoria Travascio.

So this time the internal race was On. Now the former rookies were the ones getting the performance upfront. Slowly building speed to consolidate top ten overall and recently top 5 speed as shown at Hyeres 2023 2nd place overall.

The Arg qualy finished this week with Mateo & Eugenia honoring Lange & Carranza legacy, showing top form and being 6th overall before the medal race. Finishing 9th overall in the end was more than enough to qualify for Paris and grant themselves that ticket for themselves!

We are more than happy and proud for both, hard working kids that literally left everything behind, including family, without a clear support path ahead to pursue their Olympic dream and overcoming many barriers.

They never looked back. Bright future for them.

Now we also hope the Arg Federation to renew the support they cut to zero to Dante Cittadini & Tere Romairone, the two kids who won everything in youth Multihull realm: Worlds, Europeans and Youth Olympic Medal.

In the end it never was a funds matter but how it was assigned making life hard to young sailors who are the future of the Argentine sailing elite.

On Santi Lange, all have been written in the past, he took the Arg flag to the Olympic Gold, he will remain a Legend and always remembered.

Nacra 17 Worlds 2023 Results

Top 11 with 9 Countries qualified for Paris 2024:

ITA, GBR, SWE, NED, GER, NZL, ARG, FIN & ESP

Complete list here

Regatta Rank	Competitor	Name	R1	R2	R3	R4	R5	R6	R7	R8	R9	R10	R11	R12	R13	R14	R15	MR	Σ
1	ITA 26	Tita/Banti	1	1	1	2	1	1	1	1	1	9	12	5	1	1	3	2	31
2	GBR 21	Gimson/Burnet	3	2	2	3	3	1	3	5	5	1	20	4	3	6	4	12	57
3	SWE 14	Jarudd/Jonsson	2	7	3	4	6	4	6	1	17	2	7	1	7	5	7	4	66
4	NED 505	Van Der Meer/Bouwer	10	2	2	1	4	3	7	3	2	15	1	DSQ	4	3	6	8	71
5	ITA 71	Bissaro/Frascari	STP	4	6	8	UFD	4	7	2	6	6	5	9	2	4	1	10	76
6	ITA 98	Ugolini/Giubilei	5	3	5	5	4	5	6	2	3	10	11	2	5	7	5	14	81
7	GER 77	Kohlhoff/Stuhlemmer	STP	1	1	2	1	2	2	4	1	14	17	10	15	8	10	6	85
8	NZL 96	Wilkinson/Dawson	5	UFD	7	3	2	5	3	4	4	7	6	11	8	10	2	16	93
9	ARG 29	Majdalani/Bosco	4	3	3	5	3	2	1	10	4	3	19	12	6	9	8	20	93
10	FIN 13	Kurtbay/Keskinen	2	4	4	1	2	7	4	12	6	17	14	3	11	2	9	18	99
11	ESP 6	Pacheco Van Rijnsoever/Barrio Garcia	3	5	4	6	5	6	4	3	2	23	15	19	9	15	12		108