Nacra 17 Youth Worlds 2026: Final Day
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Photos by © Klaas Wiersma –
Italian sailors dominated the Nacra 17 Youth worlds, thy already have two winning crews in the senior/open Olympic category. Great job done by the Italian sailing Fed. Argentina had the Youth World & Youth Olympic champ team not long ago but the process was abandoned.
We (the F18 Arg fleet) have requested the local sailing Fed to release the two Nacra 15s they had on land collecting dust, and we’ll try to revamp the project with the kids currently sailing F18s with us.
Never expect others to do the work, when complaining you’d better take action yourself.
Congrats to the Italian Youth squad who also took the Youth 49er title at Medemblik.
Report sent by Nacra 17 Class Assoc – Event results available here
Day Five in Medemblik: World Champions Crowned in the 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 Fleets
Italy topped the 49er and Nacra 17 fleets, Poland took the 49erFX crown with a race to spare, and the 2026 Junior World Championship wrapped up with three tight, dramatic finishes
MEDEMBLIK, NETHERLANDS, July 26, 2026 Racing wrapped up today at the 2026 Junior World Championship. Organizers moved the start up earlier than the rest of the week, with the first warning signal going up at 10:30 for the 49er gold fleet, the 49erFX and the 49erFX Open, all three sailing three races to close out the regatta. The battles at the top of several fleets had been tight all week, and the final day was no different.
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Italy’s Federico Figlia di Granara and Caterina Sedmak (ITA 46) were crowned Nacra 17 world champions, a result that surprised nobody given how dominant they had been all week, stringing together close to all ones and twos across the regatta. Heavy rain moved in for the closing races, making for a dramatic finish on the water, but Figlia di Granara and Sedmak had already wrapped up the title with a race to spare, so they were able to sail the final race without needing to push. Figlia di Granara has spent time training alongside Caterina Banti, one half of Italy’s two time Olympic champion pairing, while his regular teammate Ruggero Tita has been tied up with America’s Cup commitments, and picking up some of their speed secrets along the way has clearly paid off. Sedmak has been the engine of the boat all week, and the pair have looked genuinely faster than the rest of the fleet on the foils. Their training partners, Arto Hirsch and Sofia Borgia (ITA 76), backed them up with a great week of their own to finish second, well clear of Switzerland’s Andrea Aschieri and Tine Rossel (SUI 370) in third, a result that shows just how strong Italy was in the Nacra 17 fleet this year.
The 49er silver fleet only managed to complete one race today. The wind built well beyond what had been forecast, capsizes piled up across the fleet, and the race committee made the call to wrap up racing for the silver fleet for the week.
Switzerland’s Henri Rothacher and Noah Strempfer (SUI 434) topped the FX Open fleet from start to finish, holding onto the lead they took on day one all the way through to the final race. The United States’ Samantha Gardner and Noah Nyenhuis (USA 49) held on for second, with fellow Swiss crew Jacob Ryu Bruendler and Thierry Stucki (SUI 515) rounding out the podium in third.
