Teen Stars Aim for Glory at 2028 Olympics' First Beach Sprint Rowing

Italian teenager Lucio Fugazzotto discovered while on a bus ride that beach sprint rowing, his passion, will be introduced in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Determined to compete, Fugazzotto, a European junior champion, alongside other notable athletes, aims to secure a spot and chase medals in this new, dynamic sport.

Italian teenager Lucio Fugazzotto was on the bus home from school when he found out that his sport of beach sprint rowing would feature in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and vowed to be among the competitors chasing medals.

"I turned to my friend and I said, 'Maybe in four years, I'll be at the Olympics. Maybe you'll watch me, I hope'. "I will try my best every day to represent Italy at the first beach sprint Olympics," said the 17-year-old Sicilian, who is the European junior male champion in the sport.

Since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in October that beach sprint rowing would be part of the Olympics for the first time in 2028, the young sport has accelerated at competitions such as the European Coastal and Beach Sprint Championships in Gdansk, Poland, that ended on Sunday. Classic rowing has been a staple of the summer Games since the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1896. The new, speed-focused sport of beach sprint combines running, rowing a marked 250-metre coastal water course there-and-back, then running again to the finish line on the beach.

Like many others, Fugazzotto made the switch to beach sprint from flat-water rowing last year after trying the event at a championship in his home country, going on to finish the season as world champion in the under-19 category. "It's a completely new dynamic," said world champion Janneke van der Meulen at the European Championships where she placed third in the women's singles category.

The 38-year-old Dutch athlete competed at the first global beach sprint event in 2019 and said the sport had become a lot more professional since. "In the beginning I was doing it all by myself," she said of her training and competing.

Van der Meulen, whose three-year-old daughter joined her in Gdansk, said she would rely on her years of experience and confidence when it came to qualifying for the Olympics. Spanish junior women´s European champion Lucia Navarro Blasco, who competes in both flat-water and coastal rowing, said she expected to have to choose between the disciplines before her potential Olympic debut.

Her team mate, seven-times world champion Adrian Miramon, said he saw the Olympics as motivation to train harder, adding: "I'll be fighting to get gold in Los Angeles." The 32-year-old Miramon said he had been impressed with the level of competition at the European Championships, especially among young athletes.

In the quarter-finals he competed against a 22-year-old Polish athlete and recalled, "When we finished the quarter-final I told him, 'Train hard because you are very fast'." For now, Miramon is taking things "little by little, year by year," with the Spanish championships next and then the worlds in Genoa, Italy, in September.

"My dream is to go to the Olympics but if it's not possible for me, no problem," Miramon said. "I am very happy that beach sprint will be in the Olympics."

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)