Who has won the most medals in Olympic sailing?

Over more than 100 years of Olympic sailing, three men stand alone as members of the five-medal club.

It takes remarkable consistency and longevity to claim five Olympic sailing medals, with Sir Ben Ainslie, the most decorated sailor of all, joined by Brazilian duo Robert Scheidt and Torben Grael in achieving the feat.

Ainslie and Scheidt achieved the feat at five successive Games, between 1996 and 2012, their rivalry up there with sailing’s greatest. In 1996, it was Scheidt who triumphed as Ainslie took silver in the Laser, before the podium positions were reversed four years later in Sydney.

They then went their separate ways, Scheidt taking Laser gold in Athens, where Ainslie moved across to the Finn class, winning three successive gold medals to take his tally to four.

Scheidt, meanwhile, switched to the Star class for his last two Olympic participations, winning silver in Beijing and bowing out with bronze in London.

 

Who was the first to five?

The first man to win five Olympic medals was Grael, who won silver in the Soling class in 1984 in Los Angeles before switching to the Star class.

With a silver and a bronze already to his name, Grael won his first Olympic gold at the fourth time of asking, as he and Marcelo Ferreira triumphed in the Star class in Atlanta.

The duo added bronze in Sydney before combining once again in Athens as Grael signed off on the top step of the podium with his second gold medal and fifth medal in all.

With four gold medals and one silver, Ainslie is the most successful Olympic sailor of all, one of just two people with four Olympic sailing golds.

The other is Denmark’s Paul Elvstrøm, who dominated in the Firefly and the Finn class between 1948 and 1960.

In all, there are six sailors with four Olympic medals, sitting one behind Ainslie, Grael and Scheidt.

Five of them are men, with the most decorated female sailor, in terms of total medals, being windsurfer Alessandra Sensini of Italy.

Sensini won Mistral gold in Sydney, with bronze medals in the same class either side of that victory, before she finished with a silver in the RS:X in Beijing.

While Sensini has won the most Olympic medals of any female sailor, the most decorated title belongs to Hannah Mills of Team GB.

Mills won her second Olympic gold medal in Tokyo, winning in the women’s 470 class alongside Eilidh McIntyre, having won gold and silver in the class with Saskia Clark in Rio and London.

That tally of two golds and a silver could be matched or even topped by Brazilian pair Kahena Kunze and Martina Grael, the latter continuing the legacy of her father Torben.