Montreal sailor Carlos Charabati crowned 2024 ILCA 4 Youth World champion
by Sail Canada 1 Jul 2024 03:05 BST
June 23-30, 2024
2024 ILCA 4 Youth World Championships podium © Sail Canada
Canadian Sailor Carlos Charabati from Montreal, QC, won the gold medal at the 2024 ILCA 4 Youth World Championships which ended Sunday in Viana do Castelo, Portugal.
Carlos Charabati's gold medal is a first in Canadian sailing at the annual ILCA 4 Youth World Championships. The first edition was held in 2002.
His performance is Canada's best-ever in the history of the competition. The previous top Canadian performance dated back to 2006, when Mathew Archibald won a bronze medal at the Youth World Championships that were held in the U.S.A.
Throughout the six days of the event, Carlos Charabati recorded seven top 10 results during the nine races that were held, including two wins. After day 1 was cancelled because of a lack of wind, Charabati took the third spot in the overall ranking on day 2, then took the lead after days 3 and 4. On Saturday, he fell back one position to slip into second place, but was able to take the first spot again on the last day of the event.
"It's incredible! I haven't even come to grips with what has happened yet. It doesn't even feel real," said Carlos Charabati, who represents the Pointe-Claire Yacht Club and the Clube Naval de Cascais.
"Today was a bit stressful. With light winds, anything can happen in the gold fleet, but I knew what we had to do, and we did a really good pre-start to get there. We had some delay during the day but in the end, we got racing and then I had a line and we took it from there."
A total of 15 Canadians took part in the competition, including 10 in the men's event and five on the women's side.
Here are the final results for the Canadian sailors who competed at the 2024 ILCA 4 Youth World Championships:
Men (276 sailors)
GOLD. Carlos Charabati
77. Andre Deseau
104. Gustave Deseau
139. Theo Chapman
163. Yuanda Zhang
204. Ryan Coholan
228. Angus Beauregard
241. Cooper Simpson
248. Wyatt Gitt
265. Benjamin Port-Louis
Women (150 sailors)
107. Maya Wolf
112. Eva Doucette
115. Emilia Armitage
138. Alicia Letham
148. Claire Lamont