Day Five in Medemblik: World Champions Crowned in the 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 Fleets
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.
The 49er gold fleet delivered the tightest title fight of the week, and it turned into a genuine match race between Italy and Germany over the final three races. The opening race of the day produced a dead heat at the top, with much the same boats that had been leading the overall standings again filling the top of the results, just shuffled into a different order, and the net effect left Italy's Lorenzo Pezzilli and Tobia Torroni (ITA 75) tied with Germany's Kjell Haschen and Iven Anton Fromm (GER 182). The second race turned tense in a different way. Sailing so closely on each other that the pair got caught up in traffic at a gate mark, both boats capsized while match racing one another. Pezzilli and Torroni came away with their worst counting score of the week, and Haschen and Fromm dropped well back too, though not quite as deep as the UFD they had already picked up earlier in the regatta. That left everything to play for heading into the final race, and it really was anyone's game. In the end, Pezzilli and Torroni held their nerve to finish the week with the lower score of the two crews, taking the win and the 2026 49er Junior World Championship title by three points. Haschen and Fromm, last year's world champions, closed out the regatta as vice world champions, and with both sailors now past the age limit for Junior Worlds, it marked the end of an era for a partnership that had been at the front of this fleet for two years running.
The 49erFX title was wrapped up well before racing finished, and it was a good thing too. Poland's Ewa Lewandowska and Anna Zwara (POL 771), who had moved into the overall lead the day before, won race one and then backed it up with another win in race two, building such a big lead that the final race would not have changed the outcome. As they sailed freely downwind afterward, waiting for the start of race three, a pin on one of their shrouds broke. With no way to fix rigging like that out on the water, their regatta ended right there and then, well before the final start. Had the title still been on the line, it would have been a heartbreaking way to lose it, but with the championship already sealed, Lewandowska and Zwara simply watched the last race go by as newly crowned world champions instead. It capped a remarkable week for Lewandowska, already a former 29er world champion and the first ever female winner of the Rolex Young World Sailor of the Year award. Poland's other boat, training partner and previous leader Klara Sobczak and Magdalena Skórnóg (POL 280), had a mixed final day but did enough to hold onto second overall, giving Poland both gold and silver in the fleet. Japan's Manase Ichihashi and Rinko Goto (JPN 717) finished the week strongly, with three solid results in the closing races to secure the bronze medal. Great Britain's Karrie Clark and Felicity Brellisford (GBR 214) narrowly missed out on the podium in fourth after a really strong week, with Germany's Jule Ernst and Lea Adolph (GER 170) just a point further back in fifth.
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.
Full schedules and results are posted here: https://49er.org/events/2026-junior-world-championship/
