September 27, 2022
8 minutes reading time
Voting for the 2022 World Sailing Awards is now open
The World Sailing Awards 2022 - celebrating the outstanding achievements and exceptional contributions throughout the sport of sailing - is now open for online voting!
This year’s awards include the 2022 Rolex World Sailor of the Year, World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award, Team of the Year and Boat of the Year and will be revealed at the awards ceremony on Tuesday 25 October 2022.
You can have your say on who wins the 2022 Rolex World Sailor of the Year and the World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award.
Click here to cast your votes.
2022 Rolex World Sailor of the Year: Male and Female categories
A total of nine athletes – world champions, Olympic medallists and world record holders – have been shortlisted this year.
The winners will have their name engraved on the iconic marble and silver trophy depicting the globe, crowned with five silver spinnakers representing the continents, as well as a souvenir they will keep close to them forever.
The 2022 Rolex World Sailor of the Year finalists are:
Female category
- Hélène Noesmoen (FRA)
- Odile van Aanholt & Annette Duetz (NED)
- Caterina Marianna Banti (ITA)
Male category
- Ruggero Tita (ITA)
- Jean-Baptiste Bernaz (FRA)
- Nicolas Goyard (FRA)
- Bart Lambriex & Floris van der Werken (NED)
World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award
The World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award celebrates the delivery of high-impact, highly-replicable sustainability initiatives, aligned to World Sailing’s Sustainability Agenda 2030.
One of the four projects shortlisted will win the $10,000 USD prize to fund their continued sustainability efforts as well as the iconic trophy.
Four exceptional finalists have been shortlisted for the 2022 World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award, representing the full spectrum of global sustainability initiatives within sailing and the marine industry.
The 2022 nominees are:
Team of the Year
The Team of the Year Award will be presented to a crew of two or more sailors from any category of sailing and celebrates teams who personify the sporting values of integrity, ambition, resilience and resourcefulness.
Boat of the Year
The World Sailing Boat of the Year Award will be presented in recognition of outstanding boat design, innovative concepts and ground-breaking technological advancements that are changing the face of sailing, pioneering change across the world.
About the nominees for Female Sailor of the Year
Helene Noesmoen (FRA): She has been dominant in the new Olympic windsurfing equipment for Paris 2024, ably shifting from the RS:X to the new foiling board. In the absence of a world title during the award’s qualifying period, she capped her impeccable season by winning the iQFOiL European Championship. Her elite skills have also seen her race on the France SailGP Team.
Odile van Aanholt and Annette Duetz (NED): This new pairing for 2022 has ruled the Olympic Women’s Skiff event, parlaying past success with other partners claiming consecutive World and European titles in the 49er FX. This is the second world title for Van Aanholt and third in for Duetz.
Caterina Banti (ITA): When the Nacra 17 was modified for the Paris 2024 Mixed Multihull event, Banti along with partner Ruggero Tita have been unstoppable in the new equipment. After winning the European Championship by 74 points, their scoreline at the World Championship had wins in 14 of the 16 qualifying races, easily securing the title prior to the Medal Race.
About the nominees for Male Sailor of the Year
Ruggero Tita (ITA): Following Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020, Tita with partner Caterina Banti have left the Nacra 17 fleet fighting for second in the Mixed Multihull event. With Class-approved changes to the rudder system that enhances foiling, this team has mastered the new configuration, winning both the European Championships and World Championships by impressive margins.
Jean-Baptiste Bernaz (FRA): In what may be one of the hardest world titles to win, Bernaz toppled 126 sailors from 45 countries to win the ILCA 7 Men’s World Championship. After getting black-flagged at the start of the penultimate race, he regained his focus in the finale to win the title by 17 points. Bernaz also has excelled in match racing, winning an event on the US Grand Slam circuit, finishing second overall in this Grade 2 series.
Nicolas Goyard (FRA): Putting aside his Olympic equipment, Goyard won four of the five races at the Défi Wind, toppling more than 1200 athletes in windsurfing’s biggest event. His love of foiling has combined well with the new windsurfing equipment for Paris 2024, and while there was no world title to claim during the award’s qualifying period, he took wins in the iQFOiL at Semaine Olympique Française and the European Championship.
Bart Lambriex and Floris van de Werken (NED): After winning the Hempel World Cup Allianz Regatta and taking second at the European Championship in the 49er Class, this Dutch duo put their stamp on the Olympic skiff event by defending their 2021 title at the World Championship, securing the victory before the Medal Race.
Click here to cast your votes.
About the 2022 World Sailing 11th Hour Racing Sustainability Award Nominees:
Based in Kenya, the Flipflopi Project is a circular economy movement that has successfully built the world’s first sailing dhow from 100% plastic waste and 30,000 washed-up flipflops. Through boat-building innovation and three sailing expeditions, the Flipflopi Project has developed an alternate use for plastic waste and created a compelling communication magnet, attracting media, policy-makers and public attention like no other plastic pollution initiative in Africa or the Indian Ocean.
This in turn has inspired the development of practical community-led recycling centres around East Africa including establishing the only Plastics Material Recovery Facility and Recycling Centre in Lamu, Kenya, as well as a Heritage Boat-Building School to design and construct recycled plastic sailing vessels with local boatbuilders based on indigenous ‘dhow-building’ skills.
Flipflopi’s long-term goals are to work with ocean and lake-dwelling communities to create scalable, sustainable waste management and plastic recycling centres, as well as the research and development of further innovations in plastic boat-building – ultimately to create more sailing vessels that capture hearts and minds of millions as they sail to raise awareness of the urgent need to beat plastic pollution.
Flipflopi works in logistically challenging areas, including remote island states, and in low-income areas surrounding Lake Victoria.
Over the past 23 years, Fundacion Ecomar has carried out activities through a program in over a hundred sailing schools and clubs all over Spain and Portugal. Over 15,000 sailors each year have learned how to reduce waste, separate it correctly to promote circularity and play an active role in taking care of the seas and coasts.
The goal is that all those entering the sport of sailing learn how to take care of the sea whilst learning to sail. This is carried out through Ecomar´s program that starts by educating, continues by raising awareness and, later on, calls them to action. Learning through experience from a young age has proved to be the most effective way to embed sustainability in sailors.
Ecomar was founded by Theresa Zabell over 23 years ago after she retired from Olympic sailing having won two gold medals in the Olympic Games.
EurILCA Sustainability Program
EurILCA is the European region of ILCA and is responsible for the organisation of European Championships and some other European level ILCA events and coordination of 42 European districts. Since 2020, all of their European Championships – a total of 10 – have been impacted by their program of avoiding using thousands of plastic stickers and single-use items and they have used their social media platform for raising awareness about ocean pollution.
From 2022, specific sustainability requirements are included in the contract signed between EurILCA and clubs hosting the events. These initiatives also inspired clubs that are not hosting their events to contact EurILCA, and take sustainability initiatives for their local events.
Their work makes sailing more sustainable by not only raising awareness through social media, but also taking concrete action and changing the way they organise European Championships of the most popular dinghy in the world with hundreds of participants in each event, making over a thousand participants per year. EurILCA have managed to make a replicable project that is low cost, applicable and adaptable to all class regattas in all countries.
For over 10 years, Greenboats, based in Bremen, Germany, has pioneered the design and manufacture of natural fibre products and components, demonstrating and establishing sustainable alternatives to conventional composite materials. A key milestone was the design, build and concept testing of the FLAX27 Daysailer, a 27-foot keel boat built almost entirely from organic or recycled products, ie, flax fibres, cork, recycled PET and bio-epoxy resins.
Regatta wins and miles sailed proved the FLAX27’s performance against traditional approaches and caught the eye of Vendee Globe sailor and Greta Thunberg associate Boris Herrmann and Team Malizia, leading to a productive partnership and an opportunity to showcase the application of Greenboats’ materials at the pinnacle of offshore sailing. Malizia’s new IMOCA, Malizia-Seaexplorer, showcases 49 Greenboats components manufactured from sustainable materials that successfully rival their traditional counterparts.
Drawing on the newest materials, highly-skilled craftsmanship and precise bio-composite technical data collected over several years, Greenboats has been able to ensure the sustainability, durability and competitive mechanical properties of all components. The project goal is to globally showcase that sustainable materials can withstand the harshest of marine environments and can ultimately change the footprint of our sport.
Click here to cast your votes.