Lucio Fugazzotto, an Italian teenager on his way home from school, learned that the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028 would include beach sprint rowing. He vowed to compete and win medals.

"I turned and said to my friend, 'Maybe I'll be at Olympics in four years. You might watch me.

The 17-year old Sicilian who is currently the European Junior Male Champion in the sport said, "I will do my best to represent Italy at this first beach sprint Olympics."

The International Olympic Committee announced in October 2018 that beach sprint rowing will be included in the Olympics in 2028 for the first-ever time. Since then, competitions like the European Coastal and Beach Sprint Championships that concluded on Sunday in Gdansk in Poland have accelerated.

Since the first modern Olympiad, held in Athens 1896, classic rowing has become a mainstay of summer Games. Beach sprint is a new sport that focuses on speed. It combines running with rowing along a 250 metre course of coastal water, and then running to the finish.

Fugazzotto, like many others, switched from flat-water to beach sprint last year, after trying out the event at a championship held in his country. He went on to win the world title in the category for under-19s.

Janneke Van der Meulen, world champion in women's singles, said at the European Championships that "it's a totally new dynamic".

The Dutch athlete, 38 years old, competed in the first global beach-sprint event of 2019 and claimed that the sport has become more professional.

She said, "At first I did it all myself" when she was training and competing.

Van der Meulen's three-year old daughter, who joined her in Gdansk with her, said that she would rely upon her experience and confidence to qualify for the Olympics.

Lucia Navarro Blasco of Spain, the junior women's European rowing champion, competes both in flat-water and coast rowing. She expects to have to decide between disciplines before she makes her possible Olympic debut.

She said that her teammate, seven-time world champion Adrian Miramon saw the Olympics as a motivation to train more, and added: "I will be fighting for gold in Los Angeles."

Miramon, 32, said that he was impressed by the level of competition in the European Championships - especially among the young athletes.

He competed in the quarter finals against a 22 year old Polish athlete. "When we finished our quarter-final, I told him: 'Train Hard because You are Very Fast'."

Miramon will take things "year by year" and start with the Spanish Championships, followed by the Worlds in Genoa in September.

Miramon stated, "My dream would be to attend the Olympics. If that's not feasible for me then it is no problem." "I'm very happy to see that the beach sprint is in the Olympics."