First Finn to win Finn World Champs

Oskari Muhonen has become the first ever Finnish sailor to win the 2024 Finn Gold Cup, held September 3-7 in Aarhus, Denmark. He dominated in light and strong winds with great speed and tactics, winning five of the seven races.

Hungary’s Doma Nemeth had his chances but in the end finished second, only beating Muhonen in one race. But as the leading U23 sailor here, he takes home the Finn Silver Cup, a title he has twice won and which Muhonen has won three times. Third place was a real battle with Italy’s Alessandro Marega winning by one point over France’s Valerian Lebrun.

“I am obviously very happy,” said Muhonen. “I had a very solid week, I raced well in the lighter winds at the beginning of the week, but also some solid racing when it got windier, so I am very happy with my racing and with how the week went.”

Coming into the event, “I was pretty confident in my downwind speed, but obviously upwind speed is always more of a question mark. I haven’t been hiking much recently and have been sailing different classes, so it was harder to say, and I also don’t have my own mast so that was a bit stiffer than I was used to sail with. But it was all right.”

On the competition, “It was really good. It’s always nice to have more than 100 boats on the start line. The first Gold Cup I did was in 2017 on Balaton and that had more than 100 boats. Aarhus is nice place to sail, with a variety of conditions but was a bit unstable at times.”

There has been a lot of talk about class development with many younger sailors competing. This will be the last Finn Silver Cup for the U23 age category as it will now be U29 to include a wider range of sailors. There were 20 sailors under 30 years old at the 2024 Gold Cup, an improvement in recent years and this trend is expected to continue. The young sailors here formed a close cooperation and are now actively driving what they want from the class.

Doma Nemeth was the runaway winner of the last ever U23 Silver Cup, a title he last won in 2022. Second place went to Australia’s Jack Eickmeyer, who was supported via funding from the International Finn Association of Australia via its Silver Cup Fund, which the class there has set up to support young sailors. They plan to send another young sailor next year, and many national associations are looking at ways to establish similar initiatives, which is very positive news. Third place went to Hungary’s Attila Svastits.

“I learnt a lot and I see where I can improve more, so I am pretty happy about it,” said Nemeth. “I am 22 now, so looks like I have some more youth years ahead of me, so yeah, you’ll see me soon.”

Having tried a 49er campaign, he stopped as he could not lose enough weight healthily. “I am actually not as large as I was, but I like it like this as I am fast. I would like to do more Finn sailing. I am not training that much anymore. But I am really happy how I continued to improve my sailing by not sailing Finn, but sailing the Finn is still good for me.”

Final Results (Top 10 of 103; 7 races, 1 discard)
1 FIN 8 Oskari MUHONEN 7
2 HUN 80 (U23) Domonkos NÉMETH 15
3 ITA 1103 Alessandro MAREGA 23
4 FRA 111 Valérian LEBRUN 24
5 ITA 40 Marko KOLIC 47
6 GBR 5 Cameron TWEEDLE 48
7 ESP 161 Miguel FERNÁNDEZ VASCO 51
8 NOR 5 Lars Johan BRODTKORB 52
9 GER 711 André BUDZIEN 52
10 FRA 75 Laurent HAY 59

Full results: https://www.manage2sail.com/en-US/event/41b55140-a79d-4661-93a5-7d898ded3009#!/results?classId=71d323a0-56e6-45a6-8d86-b1a71163412b

Source: IFC