CORPUS CHRISTI, TX – Two young sailors from Greece participated in the 2018 Youth Sailing World Championships held in Corpus Christi, Texas, July 14-21. Viktoria-Paraskevi Smyrnioudi sailed in the Laser Radial Girls Class and Leonidas Tsortanidis wind surfed in the RS:X Boys Class. They are coached by Leonidas’ father Demetrios Tsortanidis.

They took time out to meet and take a photo with Fr. John Hayden Haby of Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church of Corpus Christi, TX, in the Metropolis of Denver.

The Youth Sailing World Championships was first held in Angelholm, Sweden in 1971 where 16 nations competed for the inaugural titles in the two-person dinghies, 420 and Flipper. As the regatta evolved further classes were added to bring the best young sailing talent across the world together in one place to compete.

Previous participants include Nikos Kaklamanakis who won the bronze in 1986 for the Mistral class, and then went on to win gold in Men’s Mistral at the 1996 Olympics and silver in the same class at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Cyprus’ Pavlos Kontides won back to back gold at the Youth Sailing World Championships in 2007 and 2008 in Laser, and then won silver at the 2012 Olympics.

More information about the Youth Sailing World Championships is available online: worldsailingywc.org.