{"id":153039,"date":"2024-08-08T08:56:52","date_gmt":"2024-08-08T07:56:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=153039"},"modified":"2024-08-08T08:57:26","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08T07:57:26","slug":"unstoppable-australia-wearn-takes-fourth-straight-olympic-sailing-dinghy-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/events-2\/unstoppable-australia-wearn-takes-fourth-straight-olympic-sailing-dinghy-gold-153039","title":{"rendered":"Unstoppable Australia: Wearn takes fourth-straight Olympic Sailing Dinghy gold"},"content":"Winning the Men\u2019s Olympic Dinghy medal race in an assured fashion, Matt Wearn today not only continued his nation\u2019s extraordinary run of gold medal titles to four but became the first Australian to win two Olympic Sailing<\/a> gold medals in a row.\r\n\r\nWearn emerged victorious from what was an especially tough day for all top ten Men\u2019s ILCA 7 medal contenders. A first Medal Race attempt was abandoned on the final run when the fickle breeze shifted in direction and died when the leaders were within sight of the finish line with Briton Micky Beckett in bronze medal position after profiting from Wearn\u2019s need to sail Cyprus\u2019 Pavlos Kontides back into the fleet.\r\n\r\nThe breeze hovered around six knots for the second attempt. Wearn worked his way to the front pursued by Kontides, the 2012 silver medallist, whilst ninth \u2013 ahead of Beckett \u2013 was enough to secure Peru\u2019s Stefano Pescheira his nation\u2019s first medal of Paris 2024, his bronze being only their fifth ever Olympic medal. Two penalties for kinetics \u2013 for rocking the boat \u2013 relegated Beckett to a disappointing tenth in the medal race, sixth overall.\r\n\r\nWhile Wearn\u2019s second successive gold extends the Australian powerhouse\u2019s run started in 2012 with Tom Slingsby<\/a> and followed by Tom Burton in 2016 the ILCA 7 has again proven its value as an accessible, true one design in which medal success is down to the athlete.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_153046\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Photo: World Sailing \/ Sander van der Borch[\/caption]\r\n\r\nWearn said, \u201cIt was tougher this time. The expectation was higher here. There was pressure last time to make selection and this time once I was here it was just a matter of competing. This time being the reigning champion and winning the last two world championships that pressure this time was super high, I don\u2019t think there were many people out there who did not want to beat me, I felt like I had that target on my back.\u201d\r\n\r\nHe added, \u201cToday I really had to dig deep and do all the stuff we had done in the lead up to this. It was super tough. I had had to be mentally tough and pull through and then just execute again on the third try.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd of the combative duel with Kontides who he had to despatch and keep behind him, \u201cIt is part of the sport. We have seen it in the past and these things happen. I would be a silly guy to let Pavlos off the leash he is a fantastic competitor, give him an inch and he will take a mile. It was a matter of locking out that gold medal and he understands that too. He came away with a second silver.\u201d\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_153044\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Photo: World Sailing \/ Sander van der Borch[\/caption]\r\n\r\n\u201cI doubt he is going to stop. He is looking younger all the time. Micky Beckett I rate so highly, he did not come away with a medal this time, but if he does not win world championships he will definitely win a medal next time. The fleet is so strong, this fleet the top ten were just going up and down all the time, anyone could have won a medal here.\u201d\r\n\r\nThis is the second silver medal for the remarkable Kontides who also took home a silver in London 2012. It is incredible record for a small programme, which he shares with Croatia\u2019s Tonci Stipanovic \u2013 who also won back to back silvers in 2016 and 2020. Third place here in Marseille also strengthens the global nature of the ILCA class as Pescheira came into the Olympic scene directly from World Sailing\u2019s Emerging Nations programme.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_153045\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Photo: World Sailing \/ Sander van der Borch[\/caption]\r\n

Bronze claimed in Women's Olympic Dinghy Medal Race<\/h2>\r\nThe only medal to be decided in the Women\u2019s Dinghy was bronze. Gold and silver were locked up two days ago by Marit Bouwmeester<\/a> \u2013 who today hobbled into the Press Conference after damaging her ankle during the in the water celebrations \u2013 and Denmark\u2019s Anne Marie Rindom. After a spirited, full hiking scrap in 9-12kts, Norway\u2019s Line Flem Hoest took second across the line to secure bronze.\r\n\r\nHas this been an overly tough venue? The Netherlands G.O.A.T, Bouwmeester does not think so. \u201cI felt people said Marseille was hard to read and unpredictable but I did not find it so bad. Through my pregnancy I did a lot of studies of meteorology and also knowing how the Mediterranean is different, I found that you could read the course and it just switches a lot. You just have to know when. I felt my coach and myself came up with some very good tactics while allowed me to produce my stable results.\u201d\r\n\r\nAnd the 2020 gold medallist Rindom, who today added silver but refused to be drawn on if she would pursue Bouwmeester\u2019s record, also agreed, \u201cI was here in August in 2022 and it was basically the same. I don\u2019t think we had any days when we saw over nine or ten knots. And it was very hot then too.\u201d\r\n\r\n
\r\n\r\n

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","excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winning the Men\u2019s Olympic Dinghy medal race in an assured fashion, Matt Wearn today not only continued his nation\u2019s extraordinary run of gold medal titles to four but became the first Australian to win two Olympic Sailing gold medals in a row. Wearn emerged victorious from what was an especially tough day for all top ten Men\u2019s ILCA 7 medal contenders. A first Medal Race attempt was abandoned on the final run when the fickle breeze shifted in direction and died when the leaders were within sight of the finish line with Briton Micky Beckett in bronze medal position after profiting from Wearn\u2019s need to sail Cyprus\u2019 Pavlos Kontides back into the fleet. The breeze hovered around six knots for the second attempt. Wearn worked his way to the front pursued by Kontides, the 2012 silver medallist, whilst ninth \u2013 ahead of Beckett \u2013 was enough to secure Peru\u2019s Stefano Pescheira his nation\u2019s first medal of Paris 2024, his bronze being only their fifth ever Olympic medal. Two penalties for kinetics \u2013 for rocking the boat \u2013 relegated Beckett to a disappointing tenth in the medal race, sixth overall. While Wearn\u2019s second successive gold extends the Australian powerhouse\u2019s run started in 2012 with Tom Slingsby and followed by Tom Burton in 2016 the ILCA 7 has again proven its value as an accessible, true one design in which medal success is down to the athlete. Wearn said, \u201cIt was tougher this time. The expectation was higher here. There was pressure last time to make selection and this time once I was here it was just a matter of competing. This time being the reigning champion and winning the last two world championships that pressure this time was super high, I don\u2019t think there were many people out there who did not want to beat me, I felt like I had that target on my back.\u201d He added, \u201cToday I really had to dig deep and do all the stuff we had done in the lead up to this. It was super tough. I had had to be mentally tough and pull through and then just execute again on the third try.\u201d And of the combative duel with Kontides who he had to despatch and keep behind him, \u201cIt is part of the sport. We have seen it in the past and these things happen. I would be a silly guy to let Pavlos off the leash he is a fantastic competitor, give him an inch and he will take a mile. It was a matter of locking out that gold medal and he understands that too. He came away with a second silver.\u201d \u201cI doubt he is going to stop. He is looking younger all the time. Micky Beckett I rate so highly, he did not come away with a medal this time, but if he does not win world championships he will definitely win a medal next time. The fleet is so strong, this fleet the top ten were …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":447,"featured_media":153043,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1540],"tags":[754,1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153039"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/447"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153039"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153047,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153039\/revisions\/153047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153039"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=153039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}