Nacra 15 Youth Olympics Buenos Aires 2018: Dante Cittadini & Teresa Romairone (ARG) , Olympic Champs

Sailing images by Matias Capizzano , complete gallery at his FB page. Pics to the left & below by coach Nico Schargorodsky —

Dante Cittadini & Teresa Romairone crowned themselves today as Youth Olympic Champs. Huge and incredible achievement for them racing against crews that have been sailing cats for years. Dante & Teresa started 1yr ago almost, but thanks to their inherited talent and the help of their two coaches Nico Aragones & Nico Schargorodsky they managed to complete a perfect 2018.

They started with warming up with a 4th at the Nacra 15 Worlds and later winning every regatta they entered: the Europeans, Nacra 15 WS Youth Worlds, Dutch Youth Regatta and now the Youth Olympic Gold Medal.

For our local multihull community it is also a great joy seeing one of their coaches, Nicolas Aragones, who started to race catamarans with us in the Formula 18. Nico gained lots experience in the Class which was key knowledge he passed to both Arg youths. Their other coach, Nico Schargorodsky started racing cats in 2016, but he had plenty of experience in other dinghy Classes. He showed his level in F18 Worlds 2016 when he learnt to crew multis on an F18 with Jason Hess, both finished 3rd in that Buenos Aires F18 Worlds.

This background to explain a bit how Dante & Teresa transformed themselves in expert cat sailors from day to night even without a local fleet, but basically these two kids showed they are just great sailors and only had a quick transition from Optis & 29ers to race catamarans.

Add they have been training hard almost every day past 12 months and you have a great receipe for success.

Second place overall for Titouan Frapetard & Kenza Fracoutard, the French youth team put pedal to the metal literally in the last two races, scoring bullets to climb to the second place overall.
Excellent response and drive under pressure for them.

Their overall for Laila van der Meer & Bjarne Bouwer, the Dutch crew was on fire till race 10, 4 bullets total at that stage. It was a close call vs France and Belguim, with a 4th in the Medal Race they finished only 1pt behind the French crew.
Another F18 sailor as coach for the Dutch crew, Charlie Begemman (Vice World Champ F18).

Finally a special mention to Henri Demesmaeker & Frederique van Eupen, the Belgians had a slow start (4, udf, 7 & 11) but afterwards it was all top 5s and we also contending for a medal, an 8th toady left them out of the podium but they demonstrated great a recovery and we are sure we will see more from them in major leagues.

Arg Pride
Argentina has the monopoly of the current Multihull Olympic titles, Lange & Carranza will defend their Nacra 17 2016 Gold medal in Tokyo 2020 and now Cittadini & Romairone are the Gold Medalist in the Nacra 15 Youth Olympic Multihull.

Extremely proud of Dante & Teresa. Argies have 3 excellent mixed crews who can race at the highest International Level, add Mateo Majdalani & Euge Bosco to the teams above.

Future look bright ahead, and we hope many kids will see Cats as an option here along dinghies.
Historic win for the Argentine Youths.

Official Youth Olympics Nacra 15 site: here
Official Results in PDF here