The first event that awarded medals was the pair dinghy race, which started with only a three-minute delay once the wind picked up to over 5 knots. The Austrian team, composed of Lara Vadlau and Lukas Maehr, was crowned Olympic champion, while Japan's Keiju Okada and Miho Yshioka took the silver. The bronze went to Sweden’s Anton Dahlberg and Lovisa Karlsson.

The points accumulated by the podium finishers in the previous rounds allowed them to approach the race with a certain advantage. In fact, the title winners only needed to cross the finish line in seventh place. Beyond the overall standings, the team that finished first in this final race was Portugal, followed by Japan. For the hosts, Camille Lecointre and Jeremie Mion, this small victory wasn't enough to contend for a medal.

As the race started, the Spanish and Swedish boats led a group to the right, while the Japanese team took the lead on the left. Vadlau and Maehr had a disappointing start, finding themselves in ninth place on the first upwind leg.

The left-hand side of the course proved advantageous, with Okada and Yoshioka crossing ahead of the fleet and extending their lead further to the left. This manoeuvre allowed France to reach the windward mark in first place, with the Japanese team close behind in second. At this stage, Japan was poised for gold, Austria was in line for silver, and the Spanish team held bronze.

On the downwind leg, the Japanese team remained steady, while the Spanish and Austrian teams gybed early but failed to make gains, rounding the leeward gate in 9th and 10th positions, respectively. Their close battle allowed the Japanese to pull ahead, as well as giving room for the Australian team, who had been OCS, to catch up.

During the next upwind leg, Vadlau and Maehr overtook the Spanish sailors, moving up to sixth place and reclaiming the gold medal position. Meanwhile, Sweden's Dahlberg and Karlsson also made significant progress. After finishing the race, there was a brief pause while the officials confirmed the points tally. The Austrian duo then celebrated their victory in traditional fashion by capsizing their 470 boat, standing on its upturned white hull, and waving their country's flag.

“It feels very unrealistic still to have won a gold medal. We are still not ready to show all the emotions, we are still in racing mode a bit. It’s a big medal for us to give back to our country because we have a long sailing tradition and we’ve had wonderful sailors, successful sailors who are all cheering for us and helped us a lot in our last campaigns,” Maehr said after winning the title.

For Okada, “this is a super medal. Our families, our coaches and all Japenese sailors cheered for us and every day it was midnight in Japan so the fans had no sleep, but they kept cheering for us. That gave us power in our sailing.”

Dahlber, for his part, was more analytical when he stated that “We are nothing but happy. We kept it together when it mattered most and we are a strong team together. We’ve performed really well into the strong breeze and we knew the light wind would be challenging for us, but we just managed to do enough.”

With this victory, Austria secures its first medal at the Paris 2024 Games and its first gold in sailing since Athens 2004. It is its third Olympic gold in this sport throughout history, which adds to a record that also includes four silver and one bronze.

The mixed multihull Final

The other major sailing final that was postponed yesterday due to insufficient wind was the mixed multihull event, which commenced today on schedule. The Italian team of Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti clinched gold, while Mateo Majdalani and Eugenia Bosco secured silver for Argentina, ahead of Micah Wilkinson and Erica Dawson, who won bronze for New Zealand.

The Italians, who began the event defending the title they won at Tokyo 2020, were prepared to replicate that success in Paris, where they won half of the races in the Opening Series. Tita and Banti had at least a silver secured but aimed for more and duly earned their prize by finishing second in the finale.

Argentina’s Majdalani and Bosco were the main challengers and were the only crew capable of taking gold from the Italians. They finished seventh in the Medal Race, which meant they had to settle for a superb silver in the Nacra 17 class.

Great Britain’s John Gimson and Anna Burnet started the day in third, but a penalty at the start line hindered them and allowed New Zealand’s Wilkinson and Dawson to finish ahead. The Kiwis eventually came eighth in the Medal Race, which was enough to secure the bronze.

“We said to each other before starting this cycle that winning the second one is going to be much harder than winning the first one. We are proud of what we achieved during this period. It’s all about the work that we put in together over three years and the three World Championships won. We are happy, but we knew it was going to be hard to win it again,” Tita declared after stepping down from the podium.

“I think if you told us that we’d go into the Medal Race in second place, we’d take it, so we are really, really happy,” Majdalani expressed. Wilkinson was more self-critical, understanding that “this wasn’t our best race, but at the end of the day we stayed in it long enough to pull it off. It feels amazing.”

After their success at Tokyo 2020, the Italian duo sailed into the history books in Marseille, becoming the first athletes to win two golds in the event since its introduction at Rio 2016. This is Italy’s 15th Olympic medal in sailing (4 golds, 3 silvers, and 8 bronzes).

Incomplete kiteboarding 

Finally, it was time for the kiteboarding finals, both in the women's and men's categories. British athlete Eleanor Aldridge clinched the gold in the women's bracket, with French competitor Lauriane Nolot taking silver and Dutch athlete Annelous Lammerts securing bronze. The podium positions were determined after the second of the planned six races, leading to the cancellation of the remaining ones. As for the men's competition, the medal distribution was left pending as only the first race was completed. The other five races were rescheduled for tomorrow due to insufficient wind conditions.