Successful year for the Valencia Dinghy Academy

by Emma Upton on 9 Nov 2013 This has been a very successful year for all at the Dinghy Academy, Valencia, with a number of career highlights being achieved by the sailors enrolled here on the integrated training programme.

The Dinghy Academy offers ambitious sailors the opportunity to sail 365 days a year as part of a multidisciplinary team, ensuring each individual reaches their full potential. As a result of this, 2013 has seen many of the sailors at the academy achieve their best results to date.

One fantastic achievement to come from the academy this summer is that of Team Captain Vasilji Zbogar from Slovenia, who won the first major title of his Finn career this year, being crowned European Champion in July during the Finn European Championships in Warnemünde, Germany. If that wasn’t enough, just one week later, he also became the proud father of a little boy, and no doubt a future Finn sailor!

Hungarian Berecz Szombor continued the success and had his best career result to date this summer, finishing seventh at the World Championship in Tallinn, Estonia; as did Turkish sailor Alican Kaynar who took a promising 10th place at the Europeans, out of the 100 Finns competing at the event. Russian Dima Tretiakov also had a career high, by finishing ninth at the Laser Radial Europeans in Split, whilst Portuguese Frederico Melo clinched his career high by coming 19th at the European Championship; he is supported by the Portuguese Federation.

These results are clear evidence of the value the integrated training programme, provided by the Dinghy Academy, is having on those enrolled. Everyone has worked extremely hard and we can be sure to see excellent results from these talented guys in 2014.

Head Coach Luca Devoti commented; 'We have a structure here that allows the sailors to grow; this is the permanent base for them, they have the option to train really hard every day with continuity. All nationalities have a chance to be a part of this programme; so far we have had sailors from more than 20 countries come through, countries such as Hungary, Spain, Italy, Slovenia.

We have a good, fun group of people who like doing sport together, the sailors who come here make lifelong friends, they share social times together; the work they do together creates a binding spirit which I don’t think can be achieved anywhere else. They develop a sense of teamwork that will stay with them always. This year was remarkable for the guys with many of them achieving personal bests and career highlights, we are extremely pleased with the results and we will see if we can improve on this next year.'

Whilst at the academy, sailors may also be supported by The Finn International Development Support (FIDeS). FIDeS is an official programme of the International Finn Association which aims to promote and facilitate Finn sailing throughout the world, by helping sailors and National Finn Authorities in those countries where the Finn dinghy and the sport of sailing are not well established. The academy and the FIDeS programme are already realising this aim and attracting sailors from all over the world, many of whom do not have such facilities available to them in their home countries.

For more information please visit the Dinghy Academy website