Optimist, Open Skiff, Youth & Olympic Sailing Blog

2018 Ora Cup Ora Podium, with Marco Gradoni (ITA, 2017 & 2018 World Champion, Richard Shulteis (Malta, 4th at 2018 Worlds) and Alex Demurtas (ITA, 2018 European Champion) UPDATED ON DEC 11 2018 WITH DATES OF ALL THE LISTED EVENTS  There are many regattas for Optimist sailors. It’s not obvious to figure out which ones to attend. Of course, there are the official IODA regattas, but there are issues with those. Not only do they require selection by the national optimist class but they are typically expensive for parents, require lots of coordination among parents to form a national team, and they are sometimes less competitive than non-IODA events. A most obvious example is the European championships, where sailors qualified for the Worlds are not allowed to attend. That's an Optimist class regulation: the best 5 Optimist sailors in each European country are not allowed to compete for the European title! So that obviously reduces the overall level of those IODA European...

Marco Gradoni (Italy), the 2017 Optimist World Champion, wins the 2018 Garda meeting, in front of Davide Nuccorini (Italy) and Martins Atilla (Latvia). First girl is Cosima Schlüter, from Germany, who placed 5th overall. Only 6 races were raced during the 3 day meeting, which is the largest Optimist and actually sailing event in the world, with about 1300 participants. You can watch many excerpts of the racing here: https://www.facebook.com/FragliaVelaRiva/videos   See the full results here: http://www.fragliavelariva.it/regatta/2437/view