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

Il Giornale della Vela’s Sailor of the Year concluded Saturday, May 24, at Marina Cala de Medici, with a big sailing party that crowned this edition’s winners, Giulia Conti and Margherita Porro, and all the winners of the other categories (Passio, Owner, Young, Innovation, plus the special Epic and Best Stories awards). A party attended by hundreds of sailors, on the same day as the Vela Cup Toscana and the celebrations for the 50th anniversary of Il Giornale della Vela.

For all those who were not present in Cala de Medici, after the first episode with the Passion Prize winners, a series of live interviews continues on our YouTube channel where we will let you know more about all the winners of the 2025 edition of the Sailor of the Year. Rendezvous today at 3 p.m. with the winner of the Owner category, Riccardo De Michele, the multi-year owner winner of the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup. Find the YouTube link below.

Sailor of the Year Owner – The interview with 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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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.