| Agostino Straulino |
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Agostino Straulino ( October 10 , 1914 - December 14 , 2004 ) was an Italian sailor and sailboat racer, who won one Olympic gold medal and one silver medal in the Starboat Class , and eight consecutive European championships and two world championships in this class and was world champion in the 5.5m-class. BIOGRAPHY Straulino was born in Lussinpiccolo (island of Lussino ), currently part of ( Croatia ). He gained his first sailing experiences as a child on the Istrian coast of the northern Adriatic Sea . He later attended the naval academy at Livorno and embarked on a naval career during which he was commanding officer of the Italian training vessel '' Amerigo Vespucci '' for some time and eventually rose to the rank of a Rear Admiral . Between 1949 and 1956 he won eight consecutive European championships in the starboat class. 1952 and 1953 he was also world champion in this class. The climax of his career as a sportsman was his 1952 gold medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki . Four years later he won the silver medal off Melbourne. After his partner Nico Rode quit, Straulino continued to compete at Olympic games with his new partner Carolo Rolandi in the starboat class (Rome, 1960 , fourth place) and the 5.5m-class ( Tokyo , 1964 , fourth place). One year later he became commanding officer of the ''Amerigo Vespucci'' and won the world championship of the 5.5m-class in the same year. He continued to compete in regattas on bigger boats and won the One-ton-Cup off Porto Cervo in 1973 and the Italian long-distance-race Giraglia . Straulino died in Rome in 2004 . |