Giulia Conti and Margherita Porro are Il Giornale della Vela’s Sailors of the Year 2025

It was a great day of celebration at Marina Cala de Medici, a great celebration of sailing that saw hundreds of sailors in Tuscan waters, between the Vela Cup regatta at sea with more than 80 boats, and the 50th anniversary celebration of Il Giornale della Vela on land culminating with the final awarding of The Sailor of the Year, the prize that our magazine has been giving out since 1991.

The Jury of Il Giornale della Vela had to decide on the list of 5 finalists per category as expressed by the online public vote (20,ooo votes!). Not an easy choice, because 2024 has given our movement so many successes. The overall award of Sailor of the Year 2025 was won by two female sailors, the AC 40 Luna Rossa coxswain pair, Giulia Conti and Margherita Porro, who together with Maria Giubilei and Giulia Fava won the Women America’s Cup 2024. It was a victory with the flavor of the first time, as the America’s Cup for the first time opened to women’s sailing, and Luna Rossa’s girls responded with a victory that was at times unexpected and thrilled the audience.

Below are all the winners of the 2025 edition of Il Giornale della Vela’s Sailor of the Year, with the Jury’s motivations.

Sailor of the Year – Giulia Conti and Margherita Porro

So different, so equal, and so successful. Two coxswains who on the surface, at least initially, had little in common. The pair that Italian sailing did not expect was also the one that made the fans jump on the couch. Instead, Margherita Porro and Giulia Conti were the perfect mix going into Luna Rossa’s Women America’s Cup with the AC40. One of the best moments of 2024 Italian sailing.

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VIDEO – Review the interview with Giulia Conti and Margherita Porro, Sailor of the Year 2025

Giulia Conti, from Rome in 1985, has in fact taken part in four Olympics. Perhaps few remember her as a 19-year-old in the Yngling in Athens 2004. Instead, many followed her on the 470 in Beijing and London, and then on the 49er in Rio. While in her career, between 49er and 470, she collected six medals between European and World Championships, including two golds, the Olympic podium eluded her. That is why there was probably left in her the desire to put that cherry on top of her career that came with the Women’s America’s Cup in Barcelona. The right recognition for an athlete who has shown she can work in a team with younger female sailors.

Female sailors like Margherita Porro, from Brescia in 1999, who has added freshness to Giulia’s experience, a different background more accustomed to foil boats. Margherita has sailed in Waszp and Moth, she has also done Nacra 17 and 49er, a profile formed with flying boats. In many people’s ears that “Giulia trust me” still rings in a crowded crossroads. And Giulia did, indeed, trust Margherita and the rest of the girls in the crew consisting of Maria Giubilei and Giulia Fava. Good girls, for a historic first Women America’s Cup.

Best Stories – Tommaso Romanelli

Night, Atlantic Ocean, April 3, 1998, 2:40 a.m., 380 miles west of Lizard Point, Cornwall. There is an Italian boat, the Open 60 Fila, which is crumbling the Atlantic crossing record and is about 24 hours from the finish line. On board are Giovanni Soldini, Guido Broggi, Bruno Laurent, Andrea Tarlarini, and engineer and designer Andrea Romanelli. It was the night that took a brilliant designer away with its storm, opening a wound in the history of Italian sailing. It was a wave defined as a “pyramid” wave that overturned Fila and tore her mast to pieces. Andrea Romanelli and Andrea Tarlarini are on duty in the cockpit. To get back on board through the aft safety hatch, the two men must untie their safety belts, exit the cockpit with the boat upside down, and reach the safety door.

Only Tarlarini will succeed; Andrea Romanelli will remain missing. No More Trouble, Tommaso Romanelli’s debut feature, Tucker Film, is a son’s delicate tribute to his father. And, perhaps, it is a documentary film that somehow wants to soothe that wound and help the protagonists make peace with that night off Lizard Point. The film, which we screened at the Marina in Cala de’ Medici after the Sailor of the Year in Tommaso’s presence, leaves a sense of bitterness in the mouth that is hard to swallow, because of the genuine anguish and sense of despair in some moments of the narrative. But it lets out the thoughts of a man who in the Ocean had realized his dreams and found himself.

Why he won: There are stories that perhaps need time to be told. This one was. Tommaso Romanelli, Andrea’s son. He was 4 years old at the time of the accident, rediscovered his father as an adult through videos of that last Atlantic crossing. And he wanted to tell the story with this unique film that earned him the VdA Best Stories award.

Owner – Riccardo De Michele

Riccardo De Michele started sailing at age 6 on Lake Bracciano. He had been racing as a boy, bowing a Brigand 750 when he was 12, then a very long break. Because Riccardo actually did not really think about racing for a long time. In the mid-1990s, after many years that his family did not have a boat, his father decided to buy a 14-meter, wooden boat, a boat absolutely not for racing. With his wife Riccardo kept this boat in the following years even after his father passed away. In 2000 he switched to a used Waquiez 60, which, however, did not have a sailor’s cabin and still did not fully satisfy him. In 2006 at the Genoa Boat Show he noticed a Vallicelli boat that was just a little shorter than what would later be his own; it struck him because it had no bulk in the stern. The boat show was in October, and in December Riccardo’s wife fell ill and was almost immediately operated on. Sometimes life holds some bizarre paths for us, like the one that brought this owner back to the world of racing.

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Trial of the Sailor of the Year: live with Riccardo De Michele, winner of the Owner’s Award

In February 2007 in fact became sanctioned a substantial recovery and exit from danger for his wife, this was the impetus to give himself a gift and somehow resume enjoying life after the great fear. He immediately talked about it with Andrea Vallicelli and the idea of doing this 78-footer, the future H2O, was born. It was born as an absolute cruising boat. Vallicelli, however, put a bug in his head: but why don’t we make a deeper draft? Then again he told him, but why don’t we go for the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup? It was the beginning of a path that would lead him to win the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup six times.

Why he won: De Michele’s is a story of love for the sea that was not born for racing. He got there through a sometimes unpredictable path. A path that passes through his wife’s illness and arrives at that “woodworm” that Vallicelli put in his head. Why not give it a try? And so it was. With six wins at the most prestigious maxi review. He richly deserved the Owner of the Sailor of the Year award.

Young – Lorenzo Sirena and Alice Dessy

Being the son of a great champion can undoubtedly be an opportunity, but in the long run it can also become a cumbersome burden if you can’t find your way. And Lorenzo Sirena, the son of Luna Rossa’s Max Team Director and an America’s Cup veteran since the 2000s, found his with a wonderful boating partner, Alice Dessy, together they went on to win a stunning Nacra 15 World Championship title in Riva del Garda.

The two young sailors coached by Gigi Picciau of the Italian Sailing Federation and Marcella Mamusa of the Cagliari Yacht Club had a great championship final in the waters of Garda. And at the end of a close fight with the French crew favored for the title, they brought home a prestigious success in a class like the Nacra 15 that is preparatory to the Nacra 17, the one with which Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti won the gold medal at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Galeotta was Cagliari in the birth of this crew. Alice in fact is from Cagliari, Lorenzo moved to Sardinia with his family following Luna Rossa’s America’s Cup campaigns, hence their meeting, after past experiences individually in Optimist and on other dinghies. A crew that has already amazed insiders with their maturity, seriousness with which they train, sportsmanship toward teammates and opponents, and constant desire to improve.

Those who know them well say they are two guys with heads on their shoulders who can have a great future. And what future is there for them? It’s hard to say now, and the younger ones should not be pressured, but the talent is there and the conditions are there to see them go very far. Come on guys!

Why they won: They had the great merit of winning a World Championship not by starting as favorites, but by showing tenacity and a desire to come back and fight until the last race. They won the public vote, also coming out on top in the Young category. They race in a class, the Nacra 15, which is preparatory to the Olympic Nacra 17, and may have a great future.

Passion- Francesco Graziani and Marta Delli

Francesco Graziani and Marta Delli, the two Tuscan lions class of “68 and” 71 from Marina di Pisa, a lifetime for sailing, souls of vaurienists, affiliated with the Club Nautico di Marina di Carrara, tenacious and consistent, great and fine connoisseurs of the boat, the wind, and sailing, managed to line up Spaniards, Frenchmen, and the rest of the fleet at the Vaurien World Championship.

In a place as wonderfully far from all the most legendary stretches of water in sailing as Lake Liptov in the foothills of the Tatra Mountains between Slovakia and Poland, Graziani-Delli completed a long trip, going on to win the heaviest medal in a fleet with 55 crews.

“It all started as a little challenge,” they tell us, getting back to do a major regatta together, and seeing where we were after we had been more on the dinghy training than in the boat for a few years. And so, here we are at the Worlds where you find yourself on a wonderfully complicated adventure: you’d go out paddling in the sun and then in the middle of a race you had 20 knots in the middle of two thunderstorms, constant wind shifts, changes of direction. But the really great thing was that there were so many kids at the Worlds, young, very young, lots of girls (half the crews were Juniors and Mixed – ed.), all to keep up with. A living class with its beautiful convivial spirit, but so much sailing expertise and curiosity to grow. A great sign. Sure we are an amateur class, but here you learn the basics and test what you know. A Worlds allows you, if you are a youngster starting out, maybe in Feva or even if you are on the Twenty novice, to race with experienced people, a 15-year-old goes around the buoy with an experienced adult,” they continue, telling us about the Vaurien spirit.

A philosophy we really like, a boat suitable for everyone, young and old, where anyone can win without spending a crazy amount of money. Why they won: they are dedicated to a cult and historic class, they do it with passion and spirit, carrying on the great Vaurien tradition. They accomplished no small sporting feat, against quality opponents and completing a long trip to a distant race course.

Innovation – Max Bianchi

It was 1975 when an Italian story began that is now known worldwide, the result of Max Bianchi’s passion for sailing, racing and mechanics. It was precisely fifty years ago, in fact, that the first feathering propeller was born: the Max Prop propeller with swivel blades. Two years after its market release, the Max Prop propeller became the undisputed equipment of the fastest offshore racing boats and, later, also of the most prestigious cruising yachts.

“I started on Lake Como, where I also met Giorgio Falck,” Max tells us. “At the time we were racing in Star, but then we switched to offshore boats because Giorgio decided to build the first Guia, which for the times was a boat already with some innovative ideas. The idea of the propeller with steerable blades actually first came from Bob Miller who was engaged in the Australian America’s Cup campaigns at the time, and I implemented it. I first tested it experimentally on Mario Oriani’s boat, the bronze propeller body with two screwed-in, steerable poles. The first real one, however, was installed on Gardini’s Moro di Venezia,” Max Bianchi tells us, digging into the pages of those years as a pioneer of mechanics applied to sailing.

The innovation for the times was such that the International Tonnage Committee of the IOR at the time had to meet with 6 months of

advance to discuss it. “It was Giorgio Falck himself who ‘defended’ our invention with the IOR,” Bianchi recalls, “practically we quickly got to the point that those who did not have our propellers were practically out of the race, such was the advantage our invention gave.”

You may be discovering this now as you read these lines, but if your boat mounts a steerable propeller, historical credit was due to this gentleman, who indelibly influenced the development of sailing.

Why he won: Max Bianchi has written more than 50 patents in the world of mechanics in his lifetime, and his propellers have forever changed the way we sail and motor sail. An award that takes into account an extraordinary career as an inventor and experimenter. Thanks to him we sail better today.

Epic – Sailors of the Year from yesterday and today

We can proudly say one thing: the Sailor of the Year award that Il Giornale della Vela has been giving out since 1991 has told, and continues to tell, the story of Italian sailing. Over the years we have sometimes received criticism about the formula with which we organize it, because we decided to give a concrete voice to the public through web voting, another element that we claim instead, also because from the Velista dell’Anno the best athletes of our movement have passed.

For this reason, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Giornale della Vela, the Epic award, which we usually award as a kind of career recognition, this time takes a different form. This time we wanted to symbolically award all the Sailors who have won it from 1991 to the present, the top of Italian sailing, a tribute to the history of our movement and the feats we have accomplished.

From the Sailor of the Year, just to name a few, have passed: Giovanni Soldini, Alessandra Sensini, Max Sirena, Paul Cayard, Vasco Vascotto, Francesco De Angelis, the Sibello brothers, Vincenzo Onorato. Ambrogio Beccaria, Andrea Mura. And again, we launched before they became top ocean sailors names like Ambrogio Beccaria or Giancarlo Pedote, followed since they were going in Mini 650s and then took off in the most important classes. From Olympic medals to great ocean victories, through great designers, and again the exploits of sailors and those of dreamers.

The Sailor of the Year has always tried to embrace, especially in recent years where we have opened it up to various categories, the entire sailing world. Our sport in fact is diverse, clearly at the top, the overall Sailor of the Year, there are the great sporting feats, but in our opinion it is very important not to forget all those who dedicate their passion to the sea and sailing.

So thank you to all the Sailors of the Year, past and present, who have made our sport great and inspired generations to practice it.

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