Olympic Sailing 2024: Australia’s Morris moves up the pecking order in Men’s Windsurfing

Grae Morris stormed into the lead in the Men’s Windsurfing with his best performance on the water so far.

The Australian started off with second in race seven and followed that up with a first and second in two later races to edge to the top of the leaderboard, as the Opening Series passed the halfway mark.

Poland’s Pawel Tarnowski held onto second spot with two strong fifth placed finishes at the start of the day, which puts him just a point behind Morris.

Israel’s Tom Reuveny completed the top three with a mixed set of results, but in the end a valuable third and fifth was enough to keep him in the hunt.

Reuveny said: “It was not the best of days. I had one BFD in the first race and a pretty bad race in the last one, but the results seem pretty ok. I’m still in the mix. Everyone had bad races so it’s a hard fleet and everyone is sailing very well.”

How it works:

Medals for the windsurfing (iQFOiL) will be decided by the cumulative results of the 24 athletes over 20 races. The athlete with the lowest total will rank first.

There are three race formats – the Marathon Race, Slalom and Course Racing. Because it’s a longer 60-minute race, the Marathon will be scored as two races.

Athletes will be able to discard their worst three finishing positions after they’ve completed 16 or more races.

At the end of the Opening Series, the top ten athletes will qualify for the Medal Series. Those ranked fourth to tenth compete in a Quarter-Final, with the top two reaching the Semi-Final.

They will then face the athletes that finished second and third in the Opening Series. Two will progress from the Semi-Final, joining the top overall athlete in the Final.

The three athletes in the Final are all guaranteed a medal, so the finishing order in the Final race will determine who wins what medal.