Dakar Youth Olympics: Windsurf Gold for Grasso Castagnetta, Epee Bronze for Aina
According to OA Sport and La Voce di Novara, Italy won gold in Techno 293 windsurfing with Laura Grasso Castagnetta and bronze in the epee with Francesca Aina at the 2026 Dakar Youth Olympics.
✨ Riassunto AI
Italy closed the day of November 12 at the Dakar Youth Olympic Games with one gold and one bronze, in two different sports and at two distant venues. In Techno 293 windsurfing Laura Grasso Castagnetta won gold after five days and fourteen races, holding off Spain's Olivia Sanchez and China's Wu Ziyan and benefiting from the cancellation of the final race. In the epee Francesca Aina took bronze after losing only one bout in the whole competition, beating Oman's Jana Al Sharji 15-8 in the third-place match. It is the fourteenth medal for Italian fencing in the history of the Youth Games.
In Techno 293 windsurfing the title came after five days and fourteen races sailed in Senegalese waters off Saly Beach West, OA Sport reports. Grasso Castagnetta, the only Italian sailor in the event, had been caught at 24 net points by Spain's Olivia Sanchez, with China's Wu Ziyan third, three points behind the leading pair: the fifteenth and final race would have decided the podium, but it was cancelled. With the cancellation, according to OA Sport, gold was awarded on equal points thanks to one more fleet race won than Sanchez, three to two.
In the epee, according to La Voce di Novara, Aina finished the pool with six wins out of six bouts and direct entry to the quarter-finals. In the knockout stage she beat Estonia's Aleksandra Nikolajeva 15-5, then lost 15-7 in the semi-final to Hungary's Lotti Horvath, who went on to win gold. In the third-place match she beat Oman's Jana Al Sharji 15-8, whom she had already defeated in the pool. For Italian fencing it is the fourteenth medal in the history of the Youth Olympic Games, according to the outlet; the Dakar edition, again according to La Voce di Novara, had given Italy seven medals at the time of publication.
Two clarifications about how these results should be told. The first is technical: Grasso Castagnetta's gold did not come from an overtake on the water but from a cancelled race and a tie-break rule, and it is worth saying so, because a title awarded this way reads differently from one won on the course. The second concerns the athletes themselves: both are minors, and this piece reports only their sporting result, the scores and the competition data the outlets published.
The network follows sport with the numbers on the table elsewhere too, for instance on travel for people going alone and on the country's accounts.