AC Youth Week II: Argentina’s Pride

When the Americas Cup Youth was announced, Gaston Terrab & Nico Aragones were already racing F18 for a while at the highest level. Coming from the strong 29er fleet, they were among the first to join our fleet after Juan Martín & Juan Cruz Benitez, also ’29ers’.

It was definitely a quality boost for the Class, having young kids crewing for the Old guys. Of course there was a pre concept on racing cats from the traditional local monohull fleet, remember we’ve never had any multihull class here, so it was 100% ‘mono’ sailing community with their all too common attitude with ‘beachcats’.

But when these young kids entered the fleet it was a key milestone for Catracing, as it was easy to convert grownup kiters , windsurfers and even ex Laser sailors, but we were missing entering the base of the pyramid, that here in Argentina it is a huge Optimist fleet followed by 420, 29ers on the way up to Lasers, 470s & Snipe.

The Red Bull call bounced on Nico & Gaston heads, and caught them racing Cats, of course they immediately started thinking to form a team and called their buddies, friends, contacts and everyone who can help them to make that bid a reality. They managed to get a budget and they started planning ahead. After months of hard training and fighting for budget their dream came true.

Today they are at San Francisco along Juan Martin Benitez, Pablo Volker, Mateo Madjalani, Agustín Cunnill & Pedro Koukurek. Felicitas Roldán also there helping with management & logistics. All talented and successful sailors as mentioned in previous posts.

Special mention to Nico, that lost his father while in SF this past week. Nicolas is the only double F18 Arg Champ and a truly talented and motivated kid, as many on the team studying Naval Architecture thus following  Santi Lange’s path. We have our future in good hands.

We are more than proud on their sole achievement of being there, learning from the best. And it will be one of the greatest milestones in Argentine sailing history looking forward for a future generation of Catsailors, and a clear path for an all Arg Americas Cup team.

Needless to say in Multihulls…

All Images Martin-Raget / www.americascup.com
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