The Yacht Club Adriaco in Trieste is one of the great realities of the Adriatic. But would like to count more
It is not only the oldest Yacht Club in the Adriatic (it was founded in 1903), the one whose athletes won 3 gold and 2 silver medals at the Olympics, the club of the legend of Italian sailing, Agostino Straulino. The Yacht Club Adriaco of Trieste is not only one of the staples in the history of Italian sailing, it is now the most important entity in the Adriatic.
“We have 850 members, 230 berths, we invest 350,000 euros in sports and youth activities,” Piero Fornasaro de Manzini, 62, president of Adriaco since 2017, tells us. “Not everyone knows,” Fornasaro continues, “that we are the organizers of the most crowded vintage boat regatta in the Mediterranean, the Barcolana Classic. And we organize the oldest offshore regatta in the Adriatic (Trieste – S.Giovanni in Pelago – Trieste), which will be 58 years old in 2019.”
The Yacht Club, which is located on the Sartorio pier just a stone’s throw from the city center, is in short the sailing engine of the Upper Adriatic. But the president has two pebbles in his shoes that he wants to get off. The first concerns the Sailing Federation: “How is it possible that my club’s vote in the federal arena is worth one exactly like that of a small club with few members. The bylaws need to be changed, so this is absurd.”
And then a regret, tinged with a little envy: “The big Tyrrhenian clubs have enormous visibility and media return compared to us. Yet we have nothing less than them.” This is absolutely true, we agree with Piero Fornasaro.
