The Youth America’s Cup on the agile AC40 foilers thrilled the audience with lots of action in extremely close races. Sometimes only a few seconds separated the six boats on the course at the finish. In today’s match race final between Italy and the USA, the smaller offshoots of the AC75 yachts reached upwind speeds of over 34 knots, with the speedometer even reaching 46 knots downwind. Mind you, this was in wind speeds of up to 18 knots.

The already slightly favored Italian sailors around young star Marco Gradoni were already on the winning track before the start due to a mistake by their opponent. American Magic entered the starting box around two seconds too early and therefore conceded a penalty. Nevertheless, the team with skipper Harry Melges managed a good first cross. When the Italians rounded the windward mark, the three-lap race was still wide open.

But only until the Americans made a serious mistake on their turn. The AC40 dropped off during the descent and was on the verge of a slight nose dive. Although the crew quickly recovered, the Italians’ lead had grown to over 400 meters in the meantime. Gradoni and his co-skipper Gianluigi Ugolini meanwhile sailed a confident race and were not to be denied the next milestone in their still young career.

Wild scenes of jubilation followed immediately after crossing the finish line. “This moment is important because we’ve worked a lot for this and now we’ve achieved our goal,” said the three-time Opti World Champion and Rolex World Sailor of the Year in his first reaction. “I really want to thank everyone, the coach, the shore team, the technical team, everyone really, because it was very hard to get to this level. But we did it and it’s a great feeling.”

Both finalists involved their youngsters in the big campaign and gave them early sailing time on the boats. If the current strict nation rule in the America’s Cup remains in place, this approach should herald a promising future for both teams. Gradoni was even at the helm during the pre-regatta in Jeddah and was able to compete with the greats of the Cup world. The 20-year-old from Rome even got training time on the big AC75.

However, its fate is still in the hands of veterans Jimmy Spithill and Francesco Bruni. They opened the Louis Vuitton Cup final against Ben Ainslie’s British Cup chasers with a clear success in the first race just a few hours after the triumph of their own youngsters. Seven wins are needed to challenge the defending champions from Emirates Team New Zealand for the legendary silver jug in the America’s Cup match starting on October 12.