Cesic wins Melges 24 Euros by never having a bad race

Razjaren's title defence came down to one thing. In a 42-boat fleet, Cesic's worst result all week was a sixth.

Racing wrapped in Tønsberg, Norway, after nine races, with the scheduled tenth abandoned when the wind never topped four knots on the final day. Ante Cesic's Croatian crew aboard Razjaren finished on 22 points, 14 clear of Paolo Brescia's Italian Melgina on 36, with Vladimir Prosikhin's Nika rounding out the overall podium on 44. It's Cesic's second Euro title in a row, following his 2024 win in Split.

Cesic won a headline-making four of the nine races. But winning wasn't rare in this competition; five different boats took a race win across the regatta. What set Razjaren apart was everything that happened in between his wins.

The scorecard that won it

Cesic opened the regatta with a ninth, an ordinary start. Everything after that was a win or a top six: 1, 1, 5, 2, 6, 1, 1, 5. Drop that opening ninth under the one-discard rule and Razjaren's scoreline is eight races for 22 points. That consistency shaped the final outcome. He never left himself needing a big result to rescue the regatta.

Brescia had the speed, not the points cushion

Melgina was arguably the fastest boat on the water for long stretches of the week. Brescia won twice, in races four and six, and picked up five top-five finishes across the series. Boat for boat, it was close.

The problem was timing. Brescia's discard was already used up on a 16th in race two, so when a ninth and a tenth turned up in races eight and nine, both had to count on the final scoreline. Cesic never let two bad results stack up like that. Fourteen points is a real margin after nine races in a fleet this size. Brescia’s problem was not any lack of winning pace, but too many high scores. He could discard the 16th, but the ninth and 10th still had to count.

Third place was won on the comeback

Prosikhin's week followed a different pattern again. Nika never won a race and discarded a 20th from race two, but closed with back-to-back thirds in the final two races to lock down the last spot on the overall podium. Six of his last seven counting results were sixth or better, the same late-series discipline that carried the top three boats.

The Corinthian title went to Norway's Peder Jahre aboard Storm Capital, fourth overall on 48 points and just four points outside the outright podium. It's the team's second Corinthian European crown, seventeen years after the first in 2009, and it closed out a near two-decade campaign for founder Marius Falch Orvin, who's stepping away from the boat after this event. Niccolò Bertola's TAKI 5 took Corinthian silver on 51, with Kristoffer Spone's Helly Hansen II Lisa claiming bronze on home water on 57.

Two weeks to Michigan

This was the first major European Melges 24 championship raced with Vakaros RaceSense tracking, which race management has confirmed it will keep using. There's no time to dwell on it though. Two more European Sailing Series regattas follow in Denmark and Croatia through September, and the bigger date is already locked in: the international fleet reassembles in Harbor Springs, Michigan, in two weeks for the 2026 Melges 24 World Championship, with entries closed at 50 boats.

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