Olympic Diary: August 8 - Paris2024 reviewed - Medalist insights and the class format changes
by Richard Gladwell/Sail-World.com/nz 8 Aug 18:22 HKT
6 August 2024
Marit Bouwmeester - (NED) - Womens Dinghy - ILCA 6 - Day 8 - Marseille - Paris2024 Olympic Regatta - August 4, 2024 © World Sailing / Lloyd Images
Paris 2024 ended much as it started 12 days ago - in light winds and marginal racing conditions.
The sight, not spectacle of foiling Nacra 17s crawling across the finish line at little more than walking pace, summed up the regatta. Paris2024 organisers forgot the most basic rule of any yachting venue selection process, you must have a venue where there is wind.
The teams and race management made a good fist or working with what they had, and generally getting the required number of races through.
Rightly or wrongly, the Olympics are about entertainment as much as they are about sport. And properly done, one doesn't need to compromise the other.
However that wasn't the case with Sailing. Back in late 2019 the sport turned itself inside out in the name of gender equality, and to make the sport more appealing to those who are not ardent sailing fans.
Foiling was the answer, and at its November 2019 Annual Conference in Bermuda, World Sailing passed a ticket of 10 events, five in foilers, for the 2024 Olympics - which included a "Mixed Kite" event and a "Mixed Two Person Keelboat Offshore". That choice was later changed to drop the Offshore keelboat, and the Kites moved in to take two slots - Mens and Womens event, and the die for the 2024 Olympics was cast.
The weather in the Mediterranean in mid-summer is notoriously hot and the winds fickle. That is why the America's Cup 160nm away in Barcelona is being held in Autumn when the breezes are hoped to be better.
If the weather was the low-point of the 2024 Olympics then the Gold medal win by the Netherlands Marit Bouwmeester, was the high. The mother of a two year old who claims "I do not believe in talent, I believe in hard work," used her pregnancy as an opportunity to study meterology and the weather that could be expected in Marseille in July/August 2024.
"I felt that people said that Marseille was very unpredictable and hard to read," she explained at the Medalists Media Conference. "During my pregnancy, I did a lot of studies in metrology, and also in knowing how the Mediterranean is different. I felt that you could read the course, and it just switches a lot. I needed to know which system was going to prevail. I felt that my coach and myself, came up with very good tactics, and I think that produces some very consistent results."
Consistency was Bouwmeester's hallmark in the regatta, leading by 28pts after eight race in the nine race Opening Series, in the first seven races of that series her worst placing was a fourth, and the rest were in the top three.
She says they expected Marseille to be a light weather Olympic regatta.
After having a year off after Tokyo, where she won a Bronze medal, she came to Marseille at the "beginning of August, 2022, and it was, was basically the same [as this week]."
"I don't think we had any days that were over 9-10 knots. We had very light winds, and it was very hot as well."
Even so, she concedes that in 2024, "we have been a bit unlucky, with the weather, but we are also used to that, and it was very hard to predict."
She made the point that while the Race Committee had done a good job in the circumstances, the format of racing "maybe could be different. It would be nice to have the reserve day so at least we know that we're going to get all the races in. And maybe that's something that World Sailing would take forward."
The format of the 2024 Olympics seemed to be very tight compared to previous years.
"Reserve days are important for the Olympics", Bouwmeester said. "It is important that some competitors did not end their regatta, before others had started."
The Olympic regatta began with the Mens and Womens Skiff event along with the Mens and Womens Windsurfers.
The two events underlined the difference between the old and new Olympic event and equipment thinking. The Skiffs progressed through their regatta with hardly a hitch - other than some of the more fancied competitors failed to fire. The most prominent of which was the twice Olympic Gold medalists Martina Grael and Kahena Kunze, who looked a shadow of their former selves, finishing in eighth overall. The finish of the Medal Race went down to the wire as the race and series leaders, and current world champions, Odile van Aarnholt and Anette Duetz (NED) made a basic error heading for the finish line, and came within a place of losing the Gold Medal to a Swedish crew.
The Mens skiff has a similar issue to the Womens Event with three times World Champions Bart Lambriex and Floris van de Werken (NED) initially missing the cut for the 10-boat Medal Race after finishing 11th in the Opening Series. They only got into the Medal race action after the the Chinese crew who had placed 10th were disqualified for three races over misplacement of corrector weights in their 49er. The Series was won as expected by Spanish crew of Diego Botin and Florian Trittel. They were pushed mid series by a New Zealand crew of Isaac McHardie and Will McKenzie, who were almost unbeatable in the light, winning four races but came unstuck on a day when the breeze made a fleeting visit to Marseille.
The Womens Windsurfer event highlighted much of what was wrong with the venue and race formats. The marathon race, an innovation for these Olympics, where the iQFoil fleet expected to zip around the course set around the perimeter of Baie de Marseille. A nautical Tour de France taking in some of Marseille's spectacular backdrops. However it was not to be as the breeze once again demonstrated its unique ability to just switch off - leaving the foiling boards completely powerless. After the marathon race had been in progress for an hour, and was not even half way, the abandonment flag was flown and the double points scoring race was over.
The Opening Series in the Womens Windsurfer, was won by Emma Wilson (GBR) by a margin of 51pts over the eventual Silver Medalist, and 67pts ahead of the Gold Medalist. Paris2024 was the first time that this form of staggered Final had been used in the Olympics. But the same flaw had been exposed in preceding World and European championships, in both Mens and Womens Events, however no corrective action was taken.
The Mens and Womens Dinghy events - were sailed in the ILCA 7 and 6 or Laser and Laser Radial. The Laser/ILCA is one of the well established Olympic classes and is now run by a strong class association. There were few issues, apart from having two races cancelled of the planned ten in the Opening Series.
Racing was tight as always. Both events were dominated by sailors who have sailed multiple Olympics. Records were set in both events with Marit Bouwmeester becoming the most successful Women's Olympic sailor of all time. And in the Mens Dinghy, Matt Wearn (AUS) became the first sailor to successfully defend an Olympic title in the 28 years or eight Olympiads since the Laser was introduced in Savannah in 1996. In the Mens event Peru's Stefano Peschiera defied the form books to win the Bronze medal. Although the Peruvian had sailed in seven World Championships since 2014, his best place was 10th, and to win a Bronze medal in this company was a big step up for the 29yr old - but a welcome one lifting the number of medals won by South American nations to two gongs.
To be continued and updated.