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Anne-Marie Rindom: Tokyo champion remains the one to beat
There will be few sailors in Marseille this summer as decorated as Anne-Marie Rindom. The Danish sailor returns for her fourth Olympics at Paris 2024 with eyes on a second gold medal, having scooped Laser Radial victory in Tokyo.
That class has been succeeded by the ILCA 6 in Paris, but Rindom remains the one to beat having scooped the world title earlier this year.
She will carry the Danish flag in the French capital, before heading down to Marseille to try to defend her crown.
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Here is how she got there:
Sailing in the blood
Rindom’s journey to Olympic gold began as young as five, as she followed in the footsteps of her father and siblings by sailing.
Horsens Sailing Club, on the east coast of Jutland, was where Rindom learned the ropes before initially sailing the Europe dinghy.
It was in that boat that she made her mark on the international stage while still a teenager, as she won the world title in 2009 before switching to Laser Radial to pursue her Olympic dream.
“I sailed the Europe for two years, but my dream was to go to the Olympics one day, so Laser Radial was the obvious choice,” she told laserinternational.org.
London calling
That dream would be realised just three years later, as Rindom represented Denmark at London 2012.
Rindom finished 13th in the Laser Radial class but came away with plenty of vital experience from her week in Weymouth.
“That was a dream come true,” she told laserinternational.org in 2016. “At that time I wanted more, I wanted to be fighting for the medals also. So my dream became to be a world champion and win a medal in 2016.
“Before London I had only sailed the boat for three and a half years and to be able to compete at the top of the fleet it takes a lot of training hours. I began to train more professionally, and I also started working with my coach Piotr Wojewski.”
World champion, Olympic medallist
Rindom’s aims soon became reality, as she won her second world gold at the 2015 World Championships in Al Mussanah, Oman, this time in the Laser Radial class.
She continued that form into the Rio 2016 Olympics, where she earned a bronze medal behind Marit Bouwmeester and Annalise Murphy.
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It was another huge milestone on a rapid rise between Games, during which she also won world bronze in 2016, and the Dane reflected that the extra experience she gained was crucial to her success.
She added: “In London I was young, and I was there to learn as much as possible. For me just going there was a big thing and the result didn’t matter so much.
“It was a big experience just to go to the Olympics, especially when it was so close to Denmark.
“Rio was different. My goal was to go home with a medal and I knew that I had a real chance if everything came together.
“Everything became about how I could achieve this goal. I was preparing a lot. The whole experience after winning the bronze medal was amazing.”
Gold in Tokyo
The best was still to come for Rindom, who continued her ascent after the Rio Games.
She picked up another world medal with bronze in 2018 before upgrading to gold in 2019.
This led to the Dane being named Rolex World Sailor of the Year for 2019 and she appeared well-placed for success at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The Covid-19 pandemic put that on pause, but Rindom revealed the extra year made her even better.
“2019 was a perfect year for me,” she told the Into the Depths podcast. “Going into 2020 was obviously very important and then when lockdown came we were in Palma and had to go back and didn’t really know what was happening.
“I had been sick quite a lot at the beginning of 2020 so I think I was actually lucky there was a postponement of the Olympics as it only made me stronger.”
Dramatic victory
Rindom arrived in Tokyo a year later as the favourite and looked to set to deliver on that tag after dominating the first four days.
Yet a rules mix-up on the fifth put her huge lead in peril, with the Dane believing her chances of gold had been dashed.
But Rindom got back in the boat and a seventh-placed finish in the medal race was enough to take gold by just three points from Sweden’s Josefin Olsson.
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“The preparation going into the Olympics we absolutely nailed it,” she added. “I was sailing super fast.
“I knew that the training was going so well, we knew that it would not just be winning but dominating.
“I took some really good decisions, didn’t have any drops and then on the fifth day of fleet racing everything was turned upside down.
“I completely zoned out, I cannot describe the feeling. I was just sitting with my head in my hands thinking what have I just done? How can four days of amazing sailing turn into this breakdown on the fifth day.
“It felt surreal and for quite some time it didn’t happen. I would wake up in the night and think ‘Oh wow it’s not a dream anymore, it actually came true.’
“It didn’t feel like I had done it, I always looked up to other sailors who had done it but when it happens to yourself, it feels less than the people who have done it.”
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