Olympic Sailing 2024: Spanish sail into Men’s Skiff Medal Race

Diego Botin and Florian Trittel maintained their position at the summit of the Men’s Skiff standings with the Medal Race to come tomorrow.

The Spanish duo did not manage to finish in the top five at all today, but inconsistency across the board meant they ended the Opening Series with a five-point lead.

Ireland’s Robert Dickson and Sean Waddilove were able to hang on to their second spot with a valuable second in the final race of the day.

New Zealand’s Isaac McHardie and William McKenzie opened up the action today with an impressive win in race ten, but were unable to replicate that result as they stuck to third overall.

Seven crews are still in with a shot of winning gold as we head into the crucial finale in the 49er class tomorrow.

Botin said: “For tomorrow, the key is to continue doing our routine, have a clear plan and face it.

“We have the tools to achieve it, so we are going to go all out.

“I think it will be the tightest Medal Race in the history of the 49er at the Games and I think that what will give us the most options is to go to win the race. There will be a lot of action and it will be an interesting race.”

Trittel said: “The day has not been as good as we would have liked before a Medal Race, but well, the future is in our hands and that is what counts for tomorrow.

“We had a little trouble sleeping last night, we have a lot of adrenaline in our bodies, these are long days of competition, but we want that medal and we are going to give it our all to try to get it.”

Waddilove said: “It’s brilliant. When it comes to the Olympics, everyone comes here to try get a medal, so the fact that we’re in with a shout to get gold is the cherry on top.

“I think it’s been a very challenging week. We’ve had very varied conditions across the four days.”

McKenzie said: “We’ll go home and we’ll look at the points and come up with a strategy as a team. The goal for us is to take out a medal, ideally a gold one, so we’ll push as hard as we can and try and achieve that.”

How it works:

Medals for the Men’s Skiff (49er) will be decided by the cumulative results of the 20-strong fleet over 12 races.

The boat with the lowest total will rank first. Athletes will be able to discard their worst finishing position after they’ve completed three races.

At the end of the Opening Series, the top ten boats in the fleet will qualify for the Medal Race, which is worth double points.

The score in the Medal Race cannot be discarded. The crew with the smallest overall points total will win gold.