Author: Franco Cattaneo

I started rowing at the age of 13, and since then the sport has been the guiding thread of my life. As an athlete, I was fortunate to achieve important international results: gold at the 1988 Junior World Championships, two silver medals in the Lightweight Men’s Four at the World Championships in Vienna (1991) and Montreal (1992), bronze in Prague in 1993, victory at the Lucerne Regatta, and sixteen Italian national titles. These experiences taught me what it means to compete and grow with determination and discipline at the highest level. My second sporting life has been as a coach and technical director. From the youth sector, then as Head Coach, and eventually as Technical Director, I have had the honor of guiding generations of athletes along a journey that took them from their first international experiences all the way to Olympic gold. I directly coached crews that won medals at the Athens 2004, Beijing 2008, London 2012, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020, and Paris 2024 Olympic Games, as well as numerous world titles and a record number of Olympic qualifications. I firmly believe in the value of method, organization, and planning, combined with resilience and technical precision, always placing athlete well-being at the center to make every journey sustainable over time. Today, I aim to share the lessons learned over more than forty years of experience, helping to promote a culture of excellence and to develop new generations of athletes and coaches.