sailboat race australia

Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2024

2024 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race | Entries Open

The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) is pleased to invite eligible boats to enter 2024 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race. The 79th edition of the historic 628-nautical mile blue water classic will start on Sydney Harbour at 1300 hrs AEDT on Thursday 26 December 2024.

• 01 Aug, 2024 10:21:00 AM

Maritimo Katwinchar – 120 year old yacht back and racing

Maritimo’s Bill Barry-Cotter has once again demonstrated his passion and dedication to all forms of boating.

• 30 Jul, 2024 10:16:00 AM

Winners Announced for the 2024 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race

Twin brothers Louis and Marc Ryckmans' Voltstar Yeah Baby is the Overall Winner of the Peter Rysdyk Memorial Trophy for the 2024 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race. URM Group has claimed Line Honours.

• 29 Jul, 2024 10:17:00 AM

URM Group claims Line Honours of the 2024 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Race

• 27 Jul, 2024 10:19:00 AM

Start of the 2024 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race

A gentle start was delivered to those competing in the 2024 Noakes Sydney Gold Coast Yacht Race. Fifty-one yachts assembled on the start line before the yachts crawled across Sydney Harbour and north up the Tasman Sea.

• 14 Jun, 2024 02:15:00 PM

The Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) is pleased to invite eligible boats to enter 2024 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race.

Congratulations to all the divisional winners of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2023

PHOTOS | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Official Prizegiving

PHOTOS | Day 5 Morning - Tasman Island and Storm Bay

PHOTOS | Day 5 and Day 6 finishers

PHOTOS | Official Presentation of Tattersall Cup and Rolex Timepiece to the Overall Winner

2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race - A Race for the Ages

VIDEO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race - Rolex Daily Video Summary

VIDEO | Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race 2023

VIDEO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Official Prizegiving

VIDEO | Race Update - 31 December Morning

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 10

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 9

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 8

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 7

AUDIO | 2023 Rolex Sydney Hobart Sked 6

Official rolex sydney hobart merchandise.

Shop the official clothing range of the Rolex Sydney Hobart Yacht Race and the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia in person at the Club in New South Head Road, Darling Point or online below.  

From casual to technical clothing, there is something for all occasions. Be quick as stock is limited!

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Australia's largest offshore sailing regatta Hamilton Island Race Week

Every August, spectators and yachties from around the globe sail to Hamilton Island for Hamilton Island Race Week - Australia’s largest offshore keelboat regatta.

A carnival of events Hamilton Island Race Week

The week also includes a full and diverse calendar of onshore events, including lunches and dinners presented by renowned chefs, fashion, live music, wine tastings, food stalls and more.

Hamilton Island Yacht Club Hamilton Island Race Week

The Hamilton Island Yacht Club and Marina are the home of the regatta during this exciting week - perfect spots for watching the races, and coming together with other racegoers.

Press releases and highlights Media centre

Download all Hamilton Island’s press releases relating to the event, and learn more about specific event highlights.

Welcome to Hamilton Island Race Week 

17 - 24 august 2024.

Hamilton Island Race Week is one of Australia’s favourite yachting events and a firm fixture on the international sailing calendar. Competitors, family and friends come together to enjoy the convivial atmosphere and unique camaraderie of the event’s on-water and off-water carnival.  Every August, spectators and yachties from around the globe sail to Hamilton Island for Hamilton Island Race Week - Australia’s largest offshore keelboat regatta.  Perfectly situated on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, amongst Queensland's 74 Whitsunday Islands, Hamilton Island offers an experience like no other: glorious weather, azure waters, brilliant beaches, awe-inspiring coral reefs, fascinating flora and fauna, fine food and wines, and activities almost too numerous to mention. Sailing north for Hamilton Island Race Week? Why not register for the Brisbane to Hamilton Island Yacht Race here .

AVAILABLE UNTIL 4PM AEST WEDNESDAY 11 SEPTEMBER 2024.

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Tourism and Events Queensland

Race Schedule

The Race Schedule for Hamilton Island Race Week 2024.

Notice Board

View the latest official race notices

Press Releases

Read all the latest news stories from the Hamilton Island Race Week. Find out what's happening both on and off the water, engaging stories on new entries and all the latest results.

Race Results

View the results from Hamilton Island Race Week 2024.

Race Week Daily Highlights

Can’t make it to the event? Catch all of the action here with our Race Week Daily Highlights.

Image gallery

Media Gallery

Take a look at some of the event highlights - from both on and off the water - as captured by our talented photographers.

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What time is the first race on the first day?

It is common practise for a number of crews to fly in on the day of the first race. Unfortunately flights from most destinations do not arrive until midday or later. This will be too late to get onboard your boat for the first race. The start times on other days will vary, but will generally be between 1030hrs and 1130hrs.

Can I live aboard my yacht during Race Week?

Yes, and you'll have lots of company. Each year hundreds of yachties live aboard, and the marina is a lively place. There are showers and toilets ashore which you can use.

Can I enter more than one handicap class?

No. Yachts may enter for one class only.

Can I change handicap class after I have entered the regatta?

Yes, you can change to a different handicap class (provided your boat is eligible) at any time up to the day before the racing starts. Should you wish to change class, just send us an email to let us know.

I need to book a marina berth?

No, lodging your entry alerts us to the fact that you are coming, and gives us the dimensions of your boat. The marina staff works out a mooring plan to fit the boats into the marina, but there's always a degree of rafting involved. We do try to put all the relevant groups of boats together as much as possible - such as all the boats of a particular class (for example the Farr 40's, the Beneteau's, etc).

16 Aug 2024

Camaraderie, chefs and champagne ahead for Hamilton Island Race Week 2024

12 Jun 2024

Hamilton Island Race Week - the ultimate on water action

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It’s one of the world’s fast-growing sports. But you’ll need $35m to buy in — SailGP explained

There’s no sport quite like Sail GP. It’s been called F1 on water, which is a fair assessment – especially since four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel is a backer of the German team that debuted this season.

Germany is one of ten nations competing in Season Four of the competition, where identical, hi-tech F50 catamarans race at dizzying speeds up to 100km/h.

This weekend, the competition will take to Sydney Harbour for the Australian Sail Grand Prix, the eighth stop of the 13-round season which takes place in glamorous locations around the world.

Here’s everything you need to know about the sport – and why this weekend is a must-watch.

Watch SailGP FREE & LIVE on Kayo Freebies. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today >

WHAT IS SAIL GP?

Sailing has a long history of competition – from the Olympics to the America’s Cup, the oldest ongoing international sporting contest. But the America’s Cup only takes place every three or four years, and the main event happens between just two competing yachts.

Sail GP (which stands for Grand Prix) was founded as an annual competition for teams – representing nations – to compete with the same machinery on a regular schedule.

That’s a key difference that sets Sail GP apart. Instead of a technological arms race between rival teams, like motor racing or the America’s Cup, using the same yachts means Sail GP is a test of skill and tactics.

And the yachts themselves are special. The F50 catamarans are based on those used in the America’s Cup in 2017 – the AC50. In another connection with the F1 world, Great Britain’s challenger for the 2017 America’s Cup was built alongside Red Bull Advanced Technologies – headed by Adrian Newey, who led the development of Red Bull’s dominant F1 car.

But the F50 has been developed year on year to become almost unbelievably complex and advanced yachts.

The name F50 is straightforward. 50 stands for 50 feet, the length of the carbon fibre hull. The F stands for foiling, which is when a boat’s hull (or hulls, in the case of a catamaran) is lifted out of the water on hydrofoils, or small wings that poke out of the bottom of the hulls.

Like the wings on a plane, they create lift, and the boats appear to fly or hover in the air with only these small carbon fibre foils under the water.

By lifting the hull out of the water, foiling reduces drag – and allows the yachts to hit staggering speeds. The current SailGP record is 53.96 knots or 99.94 km/h.

Next year, the foils will be replaced by a new model made out of titanium – and they expect speeds up to 110km/h or 59 knots.

If you don’t understand foiling, don’t worry. All you need to know is that these boats (with five crew members each) are hi-tech, extremely complex machines. And really, really fast.

As SailGP CEO Russell Coutts told Time recently: “When you look into the cockpit of one of these boats, it is like looking into an aircraft. You’ve got all the control panels. It looks like a Formula 1 steering wheel.

“You’ve got various control switches on the steering wheel. If there was anything like medium wind and upwards, a club sailor would probably hurt himself.”

Sir Russell Coutts himself was a champion sailor, who won a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics and won the America’s Cup five times among many other successes.

HOW DOES THE COMPETITION WORK?

It started out with six teams (each representing a nation, including Australia), competing across five events. It’s rapidly expanded, with Season 4 – the current season – seeing ten teams compete at 13 events.

In each event, the entire field races six times (called a fleet race). They’re rapid, chaotic races, and they usually last around 12 minutes.

Each team gets points depending on where they finish each race (10 points for first, all the way down to one for last place).

After that, the top three teams based on event points face off in a final.

The winner gets 10 championship points, second gets nine, third gets eight, and the other seven teams get points depending on their ranking in the event.

There’s a $200,000 USD prize for the winner of each event.

At the end of the season, the three teams highest on the championship leaderboard race off in the Grand Final – a single race where the winning team picks up a $2m USD prize.

And here’s the crazy thing: the Australian team, led by skipper Tom Slingsby, have won all three Grand Finals so far. And this year, after seven of 13 rounds, they once again lead the championship in their pursuit of a fourth-straight title.

Slingsby was already a sailing legend before SailGP came around. He won three-straight world championships sailing Laser dinghies. Then he won the 2012 London Olympics gold medal in that category. He was the strategist for USA’s 2013 America’s Cup win, and skippered Perpetual LOYAL to line honours victory in the 2016 Sydney to Hobart race. He’s won multiple world sailor of the year awards too.

He’s just one of many sailing superstars competing in SailGP. It’s the best of the best: world champions, America’s Cup winners, Olympic medallists. Put them in extremely advanced yachts and the result is elite racing.

HOW POPULAR IS IT?

SailGP is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Think pickleball – another niche sport that has exploded into the mainstream.

SailGP started with six teams competing at five events. Now, it’s up to ten teams at 13 events. Next year, there’ll be another two teams added, and the eventual aim is around 20 races – just like F1.

What’s critical is that it’s not just popular among sailing fans. SailGP CEO Sir Russell Coutts told Time that only around 30 to 40 per cent of fans have any other connection in sailing.

Last November, an investment group led by Marc Lasry, former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA, bought the U.S. team for a SailGP record price. The ownership group also includes a host of sporting superstars such as heavyweight boxing world champion Deontay Wilder and a number of NFL stars, as well as Hollywood actors and even a founding Uber engineer.

The cost was claimed to be nearly $80m USD by the Sports Business Journal .

Coutts said: “We started selling teams between $5 million and $10 million [USD]. Now you can’t buy a team without $35 million. We know we’ve got demand for teams. We can’t build boats fast enough.”

And fans are flocking to watch both in person and on broadcast, where global viewership in the first half of this season is up about 24 per cent on last season.

HOW DANGEROUS IS IT?

Well, foiling is inherently difficult. The tiniest mistake – or shift of the wind – and the boat can go crashing back into the water or capsize.

Controlling what is effectively a 2,500kg wind-powered rocket at speeds up to 100km/h – while racing nine opponents around a course with strict boundaries – means crashes are inevitable.

One of the most infamous crashes happened in Sydney in season two, when the British team slammed into the Japanese team at high speeds, causing severe damage – though luckily no-one was injured.

Even when the yachts are just cruising along and not racing, they’re still extremely complex and hard to control. Take Australia’s ‘Flying Roo’, which narrowly avoided capsizing in Italy last year when it was merely parading for a crowd after a day of training.

There’s been no shortage of crashes down the years – and plenty of damage to the yachts that are worth around $4m USD each. Luckily, there have been no deaths.

WHAT WILL SYDNEY BE LIKE?

For one thing, windy. After a series of events this season with light wind conditions – which means slower racing – the forecast is for some of the heaviest wind conditions of the entire season.

Last year, a freak weather event after Saturday’s racing damaged a host of boats and saw Sunday’s racing cancelled entirely.

“It’s a really tricky, challenging venue, which creates a lot of exciting racing, lead changes and opportunity,” said Taylor Canfield, driver of the United States team.

Canada driver Phil Robertson said that light winds – such as last time out in Abu Dhabi – create “Micky Mouse racing: it’s open to anyone, that’s the reality.”

He added: “I’m especially looking forward to Sydney because we have done a lot of light air sailing in the last four or five events and Sydney is going to be a reality check.”

A reality check of just how hard it is to control these boating behemoths in big wind.

But if things get really windy, we could easily see history made this weekend.

As Slingsby told the Financial Review : “Last year I think we got to 95-96 km/h in Sydney, so if we get a good solid sea-breeze or a big southerly front come down the coast, it will be a good shot for us to break that 100 km/h mark.”

That would be a stunning achievement – and the Bureau of Meteorology currently forecast a southerly of 20 to 30 km/h on Saturday.

Just as important for Team Australia is the opportunity to win their first race of the season. Slingsby’s team leads the championship thanks to a lot of podium finishes throughout the season – but they’re still awaiting their first race win of the campaign.

Australia has 56 points after seven rounds (from a maximum of 70, given 10 points goes to the winner each event). New Zealand has 50 and the United States and Denmark have 43 each.

It’s another close campaign, and Sydney is poised to deliver the best event of the season so far.

RACE DAY 1: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24

Race Times: 16:00-17:30 AEDT

RACE DAY 2: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Watch all the action live and free on Kayo Freebies, or on Foxtel where Fox Sports News (Channel 500) will also show both days in full.

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Aussies Deliver at Sail Grand Prix Sydney

• By Kylie Lynch/SailGP
• February 26, 2024

Tom Slingsby and his Australian crew were crowned champions of the KPMG Australia Sail Grand Prix Sydney after clinching a sensational win from Denmark and New Zealand in the three-boat final. With the home crowd cheering them on, the Australia team finally secured its first win of SailGP Season 4 in a dramatic final after missing out in the previous seven SailGP events – despite six podium finishes – to keep Australia at the top of the Season 4 leaderboard and eight points ahead of closest rivals, New Zealand.

Slingsby said: “To win after coming so close so many times and in front of our home crowd of Sydney with our family and friends watching, it really doesn’t get much better than this. After the early start penalty, I was convinced it would be hard to get back in the race but the team did so well to set up so we could overtake the Danish to take the lead and get our first win of the season.

“It was hugely important to us. Personally, you start to doubt yourself when you’re not securing wins in the finals, especially when New Zealand has been doing so well lately, you start to question – are they better than us? To win in Australia, you couldn’t have written a better script for us, it was a mark in the ground where New Zealand had two event wins in a row, and we were up against the ropes on our home turf so to deliver like that is amazing.”

The ten-strong fleet delivered exciting racing for the final two qualifying fleet races which saw Erik Heil’s Germany score its first ever SailGP race win – a great comeback after the near capsize from the team the day prior. Race 5 was close fought but it was Quentin Delapierre’s France that was the victor. Defending a strong challenge from Canada – who were back on the race track after a technical failure on the opening day – and Taylor Canfield’s USA, France had a convincing lead but unfortunately a race win was not enough to make the three-boat final and they finished the event fourth.

The super Sunday of racing came down to a nail-biting winner-takes-all Final Podium Race between Australia, New Zealand – driven by Nathan Outteridge, standing in for Peter Burling – and Nicolai Sehested’s ROCKWOOL Denmark.

With all three teams highly motivated for the win; Slingsby his first event win of the season, Sehested his first ever SailGP event win, and Outteridge wanting to win for the Kiwi’s, all three-teams fought hard to get the best start. It looked like this would go to Outteridge as Slingsby held Sehested out but both teams mistimed their final run to the startline and ended up over the line early. This left the Danes out in front and leading at the first mark with both New Zealand and Australia picking up a penalty and having to slow down to get behind them.

An early split between Denmark and Australia allowed Slingsby to get back in the race and despite Sehested gaining to within a boat length right before the final mark, it was the Aussies who crossed the line first, much to the delight of the cheering home crowd.

Sehested said: “It was a chaotic start, but they just kept pushing towards the line and we were all going to be early if no one stopped. Everyone was pretty keen for some risk so we all went for it.

“We went full speed mode, we went really hard – we had a really good shot at it in the end but we were one boat length short and as soon as I saw that, that was it – that’s life sometimes you miss by one length.”

Completing the podium was New Zealand who now has its sights firmly set on its home event, the ITM New Zealand Grand Prix, taking place in Christchurch on March 23-24.

New Zealand SailGP Team wing trimmer and co-CEO Blair Tuke, said: “I am pretty gutted because we did some great work before that. We got ourselves into a really nice spot but not the best execution, I haven’t watched it back yet but they [Australia and Denmark] were fighting each other – we thought we were going to be last so we wanted to push it and turns out we didn’t really need to do that. A bit gutted but all in all a good weekend for the team.

“We now can’t wait to get down to Christchurch, it’s been a long time on the road when you enter the SailGP league, often racing in Europe. Next stop is home and we can’t wait for that – it was absolutely epic last year and a booming crowd. I think we are going to have close to 10,000 people each day – Kiwi support is amazing and the racetrack and grand stand combo is incredible – probably the best in SailGP.”

With just four events remaining until the Season 4 Grand Final in San Francisco on July 13-14 – where US$2 million is on the line – there is still all to play with only seven points separating third and seventh positions.

KPMG AUSTRALIA SAIL GRAND PRIX I SYDNEY STANDINGS

OVERALL SAILGP SEASON 4 STANDINGS (after eight events)

*Spain SailGP Team docked two points in Season Championship for four-point penalty at Spain Sail Grand Prix | Andalucía-Cádiz

**New Zealand SailGP Team unable to compete in Taranto due to the structural failure of the  team’s wingsail at France Sail Grand Prix | Saint-Tropez

***Canada SailGP Team Docked four points in Season Championship for eight-point penalty at France Sail Grand Prix | Saint-Tropez

****Germany SailGP Team docked two points in Season Championship for four-point penalty at Oracle Los Angeles Sail Grand Prix

*****Switzerland SailGP Team docked four points in Season Championship for eight-point penalty at Mubadala Abu Dhabi Sail Grand Prix presented by Abu Dhabi Sports Council

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Sydney to Hobart yacht race — how to watch and what to look for

Since its beginning in 1945, the Sydney to Hobart yacht race has become one of the pinnacles for sailing competitors, with the event being a test of skill, teamwork, nautical engineering and tactics — with weather providing the wild card.

If you know what to look for, the race can be an enjoyable experience.

Here are some tips for getting the best out of it.

When does it start?

About 111 boats ranging from the supermaxis (longer than 20 metres) to smaller 30-footers (9 metres) will be ready to go at 1pm AEDT Boxing Day on Sydney Harbour.

The start is arguably one of the greatest spectacles in modern sport.

Once the starting cannon is fired, all teams will be gunning for The Heads and into the open water of the South Pacific, with competitors surrounded by all manner of craft.

Watch as boats come perilously close to the supermaxis.

The fleet then begins to make its way down the east coast of Australia to Hobart, a distance of approximately 630 nautical miles (1,166 kilometres).

What are they racing for?

It isn't money. Yes, you read that correctly — there is no prize money for the winners. 

Instead, they race for trophies in a number of categories , the main events for casual observers being Line Honours and Overall.

The first yacht across the line wins the JH Illingworth Trophy, but the overall winner on handicap wins the Tattersalls Cup.

The overall victory is considered the major prize for sailors and a testament to skill and tactics.

Most of the time, handicap honours are won by a smaller, slower boat, which outdoes its larger opposition when time is adjusted for size and other factors.

The reigning overall winner is Ichi Ban. It finished in 4 days, 10 hours, and 17 minutes.

This was after a protest against Celestial was upheld. Celestial was handed a 40-minute time penalty for not manning their radio for a 90-minute period, during which officials were trying to contact the team.

The reigning line honours winner is Black Jack, winning in two days, 12 hours, and 37 minutes in 2021. 

How can I watch it?

Race sponsor Rolex says the race can be watched on the Seven Network. 

7Mate will broadcast the start of the race live around Australia. Their coverage starts at 12:30pm (AEDT).

ABC TV will also provide updates throughout the event.

For those who can't watch the live broadcast of the start of the race on their TV, Seven will have a stream of the race.

You can also watch vision from the event on the Sydney to Hobart yacht race website .

If you are in Sydney and on the water, spectators who wish to watch the start but not follow the fleet are advised to stick to the "western side of the harbour".

Good vantage points for spectator boats include "Taylors Bay, Chowder Bay, Obelisk Bay and North Head on the west and Rose Bay, Watsons Bay, Camp Cove and South Head to the east".

According to organisers, the harbour will be "very crowded and traffic can be chaotic, so stay alert, follow the advice of race officials and remember to keep well clear of the exclusion zone between 12pm and 2pm".

How can I follow the boats online?

You can follow the race on an online tracker , which shows the positions of yachts as they move south.

The locations of yachts are transmitted by a GPS device on each vessel. 

As the race goes on, you can see the course charted by crews — unless of course the boat's GPS device gets switched off, rendering it invisible to spectators and other competitors — an accusation that was levelled at Wild Oats XI in 2018 by the owner of Black Jack.

What should I look out for?

The weather forecast is for northerly winds in the harbour for Monday's start, which will favour the bigger boats. They will push hard to get out of the harbour.

Barring disaster, the Line Honours winner will almost certainly be one of the four super maxis.

LawConnect (formerly Perpetual LOYAL, formerly Investec LOYAL, formerly InfoTrack) set a new record in 2016 when it crossed the line in one day, 13 hours, 31 minutes and 12 seconds, a time since bettered by Comanche the next year.

Black Jack (Formerly Alfa Romeo II) has a strong Sydney to Hobart history and is the reigning Line Honours champion. It's had a strong 2022 already, taking line, record, and overall wins in the Club Marine Pittwater to Coffs Harbour race. Black Jack has a strong rivalry with Wild Oats XI as it was the first boat to break Wild Oats' race record in 2009.

Andoo Comanche is the hot favourite for line honours this year. It has already defeated Black Jack in the Sydney to Gold Coast race this year and has won the inaugural Tollgate Islands race. It beat Wild Oats for line honours in 2017, setting a race record in the process, but only after a controversial protest . 

Hamilton Island Wild Oats XI is the most famous boat in the race but has not participated since 2019 due to COVID. Veteran skipper Mark Richards will once again be at the helm and will be hoping to improve on the 3rd place finish in 2019. 

The favourites for the handicap trophy are Alive, URM Group, Moneypenny and Stefan Racing, with last year's winner, Ichi Ban, not participating.

This year there is also a number of crews made up of father-daughter or father-son teams.

The yacht race is taken seriously for good reason — people have died when the weather has turned bad.

In 1998, six sailors died, five yachts sank, more than 60 yachts retired and 55 sailors had to be rescued by helicopter.

In 2015, a squall hit the fleet off the News South Wales coast, ending the race for 29 competitors.

When does the race finish?

The lines honours winner is likely to come in around 48 hours after the start, but this is very much dependent on the weather —  especially in the 22.2-kilometre final stretch up the Derwent River.

This is when the wind can drop away and it becomes an agonisingly slow crawl , with every trick in the book pulled out to speed the progress up the glassy waterway.

In 2021, Black Jack crossed the line at 1:37am on December 29, followed by LawConnect at 4:11am and SHK Scallywag about 20 minutes after that.

In 2019, Comanche came in at a more reasonable time of 7:30am on December 28, with InfoTrack about 45 minutes later.

• X (formerly Twitter)

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Men's dinghy medal race

Australia's reigning Olympic champion Matt Wearn won the gold medal in the men's dinghy division on Wednesday, holding off his Pavlos Kontides of Cyprus, who won silver, his second. Stefano Peschiera from Peru won bronze.

Sailing has a reputation for being a relaxing activity. A sailor is "at one with nature" while enjoying goodwill between shipmates. It is a a nice ideal, until two boats get in close proximity. And then? Then human nature takes over and a race develops. 

Wearn sat atop the leaderboard entering Wednesday's medal race with a comfortable 14-point lead over Kontides. To pass Wearn in the standings, Kontides would have finish first with the Australian ninth. Just as the warning signal sounded three minutes before the start, Wearn aggressively initiated match racing tactics against Kontides to try to keep him away from the starting line. The on-the-water umpires kept a close watch on the maneuvering. At the same time, Kontides was trying to attack Peschiera from Peru who stood ten points behind Kontides. It looked like a three-ring circus with the three ILCA 7 sailboats spinning around each other. Trying to stay out of the fray, Great Britain’s Michael Beckett was working to get a clean start since he still had a chance for a bronze medal standing five points behind Peschiera. 

Got all that?

The fleet started slowly in light 7 knot winds. Beckett was sloppy out of the gate and started rocking his boat to try to accelerate. The umpires immediately issued Beckett a penalty for the infraction. The plot thickened as Hungarian sailor, Jonatan Vadnai took the lead and was momentarily ahead of Peru who was well behind. If that wasn’t enough, Hermann Tomasgaard from Norway passed Vadnai on the second leg and moved into the medal slot. On the same leg, Peru and Great Britain were penalized for rocking and were now well behind. 

Wearn and Kontides, up in the lead, left the others to sort out the scrum in the back of the fleet. Peschiera looked discombobulated. He must have been thinking his bronze medal was slipping away. The Peruvian sailor went to college in the United States and was named College Sailor of the Year in 2018 sailing for the College of Charleston. Peschiera, in ninth place, had to hope that either Vadnai or Tomasgaard would not win the race and gain 16 points. 

What goes on in a competitor’s mind when things are going wrong while you have to keep competing?  

Champions simply focus on the task at hand without contemplating the potential disappointment. It is hard to do, and in this race, the expressions on the faces we could see thanks to the on-board cameras, provided deflating candor. 

Peschiera jibed back and forth desperately searching for a puff of wind. Wearn won the race just one length ahead of Kontides. The gold and silver medals were confirmed. Vadnai crossed the line in third and Tomasgaard was fourth. When Peschiera finished some 45 seconds after the leaders, he looked exhausted and stunned. He didn’t know exactly the order of the early finishers, nor the point score total. It must have been an anxious minute as he waited for word of the result. 

Eventually, a media boat came alongside and informed the 29-year-old sailor that he had earned a bronze medal. His expression slowly turned happy, and then jubilant.

Women's dinghy medal race

The gold and silver medal positions had been decided at the end of the opening series in the women's dingy division.

Marit Bouwmeester (Netherlands) and Anne-Marie Rindom (Denmark) scored a high enough score to claim their medals. Under Olympic sailing rules, competitors are required to participate in the medal race. There was still a battle for third place on the podium, which was claimed by Norway's Line Flem Host .

In contrast to the men, who battled fiercely during the pre-start sequence, Bouwmeester and Rindom elected to stay away from the two boats that were only five points apart. Hoest and Maud Jayet (Switzerland) were aiming for the bronze medal. Jayet fell behind early and rounded the first mark in seventh place, Hoest in fourth. The race continued in a solid 15-knot winds out of the southwest, but the breeze started to fade as the race continued. 

Hoest passed two boats on the second leg by jibing on a favourable wind shift. At the second mark she was in second place. The wind continued to drop but the race was over in a flash. In fact, Italy’s Ciara Benni Floriani covered the five-leg racecourse in just 14 minutes and 14 seconds. 

The Norwegian sailor finished second in the race to secure her bronze medal. You could see Line’s elation and how much winning a medal meant to her, not to mention the ecstatic Norwegian fans on shore.  

One of the heartwarming moments during the formal medal ceremony is when the gold medal winner invites the runners up to the top step of the stage. During every medal ceremony in Marseille, someone has pulled out a cell phone to take a selfie with three happy faces.

Mixed multihill and mixed dinghy

The mixed multihull and mixed dinghy medal races were postponed due to lack of wind and have been rescheduled for Thursday. 

The forecast calls for good wind and we should get to watch some quality racing. In the 470 class, there is quite a battle for silver and bronze between Argentina (41 points), Great Britain (47 points) and New Zealand (47 points). Italy has a 14-point advantage and will stay out of the way of the three combatants trying to win one of the two medals. 

Later in the day, coverage will continue with the men’s and women’s kiteboarding races. All of these races will be covered on Peacock. Just click on "SAILING".

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