Many of our products are the direct result of Walters ideas which have been developed through his personal experiences from sailing. Walter has a long experience in sailing, in fact started his career at the age of just 8 years old. He started like thousands of others sailors with an Optimist and then with a Mirror Dinghy built from a kit package. At the age of 13, he started crewing 420’s and 470
’s but by the age of 14 the attraction to helm took over and he started to sail Europe and Laser. In 1984 he was chosen by the Italian National squad to race the Finn class but the young 17 year old Riosa was too light (70 kg), so he decided to work out to become bigger and stronger and started training in the gym with the aim of sailing Finn again in the future. In between he was racing in the IMS classes. In 1993, he started sailing Finn again with an experienced guide by the name of Luca Devoti. After a while, they became official sparring partners for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. In between these races, Walter collaborated with Luca and Antonio Latini to develop a Finn wing carbon mast. After the Olympic experience, he decided to organise his own Olympic campaign for Sydney 2000 but unfortunately, he had to stop due to a back injury. Because of this physical problem, he started to work for Devoti sailing in Burnham on Crouch in England, where he learnt more about boat building. He worked on various projects with Tim Tavinor building boats for the 2000 Olympic games. In 2001, he was part of the PRADA America’s cup team - speed testing between Young America and Luna Rossa. In 2005 Walter returned to Finn sailing in Italy where he succesfully won the Italian National Finn Championships. In 2007/8 he collaborated with the British & Dutch Yngling federations for building boats that won both Gold & Silver medals at the Bejing Oylmpics. Currently all of Walter's time is now taken up managing HiTechSailing in the UK where he is pationate about producing sailing boats and products of the highest calibre for sailors who really want the best.
