Olympic Sailing Penultimate Day Highlights: Golds for Britain, Italy, and Austria

Golds for Italy’s Tita and Banti, Austria’s Vadlau and Lukas Maeher and British Kiter Ellie Aldridge tops great Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing Finale. Andi Robertson reports from Marseille

Britain’s Ellie Aldridge closed the Olympic Sailing at Paris 2024 for Team GB on a huge high, saving the best performance of her career so far for kiting’s Olympic medal debut. In a thrilling Final – which in itself proved exactly why Formula Kite fully deserves its place among the Olympic disciplines – Aldridge took the Gold medal.

After Emma Wilson’s bronze, Aldridge secured GBR’s second sailing medal of Paris 2024, when she got the better of France’s Lauriane Nolot for the first time in a Final since 2021.

With the host nation France looking to their red hot favourite Nolot to single-handedly save France from the embarrassment of just the one bronze medal in the Women’s Skiff at a home games where they expected between four and six, Aldridge was on imperious form.

Thanks to her speed and accurate layline calls she won her first Finals race comfortably, and then when she absolutely needed to she ground out the second consecutive victory, earned after the French hope put herself at an immediate disadvantage with a port tack start. Nolot takes silver and the Netherlands Annelous Lammerts bronze. The USA’s Daniela Moroz finishes fourth.

Aldridge grinned, “As soon as we knew the Olympics were going to be in Marseille we knew it was going to be a tricky venue we knew it was going to be light, and it has been, possibly one of the worst places we have ever kited. But we have just had to learn how to adapt and to deal with it, how to be consistent when the conditions aren’t good and how to excel when It really matters. It really all did come down to today and winning these two races. I am so happy I managed to hold it together.

“I was on the small kite which I prefer. On the shorter course I prefer the smaller kite as you are more manoeuvrable. I felt more comfortable. I knew the smaller kite would be faster upwind and the bigger kite faster downwind. As soon as I went round the leeward mark in that first race I knew I had to make the overtake move and I was higher and faster inside.

She added, “I know we have such a strong team even if the (GBR) medal count doesn’t show it. But I hope this gold brightens everyone’s spirit a bit after the week we had. My goal was to medal. I knew I could win if everything aligned, I felt I did not have a great week as a few races I was leading were abandoned half way through. My luck was good today in that I was on the right kite for the conditions. I have a level of determination and focus. Out there I am just thinking of exactly what I am doing at that exact moment. I have that ability to switch everything else off.”

Aldridge’s gold elevates Team GB to fourth on the Medal Table with only the rescheduled Men’s Olympic Kitesurfing Final expected to be completed Friday, the reserve day. With two golds, in the Women’s Dinghy and the Women’s Skiff and Lammerts’ Formula Kite bronze this afternoon, the Netherlands top the international Medal table for the first time.

Italy take gold in the Olympic Mixed Multihull

Becoming Italy’s most successful sailing medallists ever when they secured back to back gold in the Mixed Multihull, Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti fulfilled their ranking as pre-Olympic favourites, a success which has not been always as easy as they made it look.

Now with Tita’s almost full time commitment to his role as one of Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli’s America’s Cup helmsmen in Barcelona, time and logistical management has this time been a fundamental challenge for the duo who have sailed together since 2016.

Not renowned for her patience, it was Banti’s pantomime eye rolls at the victory press conference as helm ‘Ruggi’ explained how they had made it all work which spoke volumes.

With a second in the Medal Race behind the young French duo Tim Mourniac and Lou Berthomieu, Tita and Banti took gold by 24 points ahead of Argentina’s Mateo Majdalani and Eugenia Bosco.

Toughened by a long selection battle against Santi Lange and Vicky Trasvacio, the Argentine duo made a virtue of spending months training and learning the Marseille venue. Majdalani was Lange and Cecilia Carranza’s coach during the 2016 Rio gold medal winning campaign.

Called OCS there was devastating heartbreak for the soon-to-be-married GBR couple John Gimson and Anna Burnett whose early start handed New Zealand their first multihull Olympic medal since 1988 Seoul when Rex Sellars and Chris Timms won Tornado silver.

Gimson grimaced, “OCS is probably the most brutal way to lose because it’s so out of our control. I’m so proud if this week, how we sailed.” Due to get married with Gimson next month Burnett noted, “Obviously, there’s no one I’d rather be
here with on this whole journey, and we’re so, so lucky that we get to do this together. The highs and lows we’re riding together. There’s life and there’s sport and in this moment, I suppose, life and sport are a little bit separate to us. The sport’s more brutal but life goes on and we’ll get married and, you know, life will be great.”

Tied on points with the Brits going into the deciding finale, Micah Wilkinson and Erica Dawson finished ninth to leave Gimson and Burnett six points short of adding bronze to their Tokyo silver which they won behind their regular training partners Tita and Banti.

Surprise Gold for Austria in Mixed Dinghy

Not really featuring on any lists of medal favourites outside of their landlocked home country, Austria’s new Mixed Dinghy gold medallists Lara Vadlau and Lukas Maeher put together a really solid, mature series and kept their heads until the finish line. They even waited for a few minutes until their 470 super coach Morgan Reeser double checked the math before the celebrations erupted.

After disappointment in Rio, past double 470 world champion (in 2014 in Santander and 2015 Haifa) Vadlau took five years away from Olympic sailing to complete a medical degree before deciding to make a comeback when she watched the Tokyo Olympics. She paired up with Lukas Maeher and worked hard and methodically.

In the months leading up to Games they did serve notice of their form taking two third places and one win in coaches warm up regattas on the Marseille race areas.

After BFD in the first race of the series the Austrian duo have maintained a high level of consistency, attributable in part to having a clear plan for each day as prepared with coach Reeser and their ace Italian meteo specialist Elena Christo – who also worked with Men’s Dinghy silver medallist. She provided the team with very accurate, well presented historic detailed data which allowed them to have a higher confidence in their choices.

Japan’s Keiju Okada and Miho Yoshioka take the silver medal whilst Sweden’s Anton Dahlberg and Lovisa Karlsson take bronze. An unnecessarily combative attack on the Austrian duo at the start cost the Spanish world champions Jordi Xammer and Nora Brugman a probable bronze.

Vadlau said “We started this campaign together with one goal and that was to win gold at the Olympic Games. We found out early in the campaign that we have fast material and we wanted to use that. We put it aside as the material we use and that did not make it easy at World Championships and European Championships and so on as we did not always have the speed we wanted but we have stuck with this gold medal winning material right through.”

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