Gianmarco Piovanetti capped a dominant display by winning the RenaissanceRe Junior Gold Cup at his first attempt.

The Puerto Rican sailor was declared the winner after the final day of the fleet racing regatta was cancelled due to blustery conditions in Hamilton Harbour on Saturday.

Piovanetti, 15, held a comfortable 20-point advantage at the top of the leaderboard and was a strong candidate to clinch the title after winning four of the eight races contested earlier in the week in the Great Sound before bad weather intervened.

“Winner Gianmarco Piovanetti was a solid leader throughout with a sixth as his worst race,” Dede Cooper, the regatta chair, told The Royal Gazette.

“He was flawless and he just didn’t make mistakes. He didn’t get too close to the line and made it look easy. He was so solid, consistent and flawless.”

Mariana Pinto, of Portugal, finished second and claimed top female honours, while Denmark’s Frederick Hastrup rounded off the podium in third.

Nina Gotfredsen, who spent this summer training and competing in international regattas with Lake Ontario Optimist Team, was the top local sailor and finished ninth overall among the 44-strong fleet.

National Optimist champion Miguel Power and Shiloh Cruickshank finished second and third among the local contingent, with Cooper pleased with how the island’s sailors acquitted themselves

“The beauty of the RenaissanceRe Junior Gold Cup is that it introduces and encourages the Bermuda sailors to the reach for the level of international competition that they get exposed to in this regatta,” Cooper added.

“Bermuda fared well considering this was a top-notch group.”

Despite not being able to complete all of the scheduled thirteen races across the four days, Cooper was thrilled that the event made a return after a three-year absence.

“It is great to see the Junior Gold Cup back on the calendar,” she said.

“Nobody ever wants to finish a regatta early, but the conditions did not allow for any sailing these last two days.

“This regatta is a great reminder of that in the sense that we had 44 sailors from 16 different countries and you would have thought they had known each other their whole life.

“During the postponement they’re playing card games, they’re talking to each other, they’re having their lunch and waiting to see if they are going to sail and you realise that they only really met each other two days ago.”