Lara Vadlau and Lukas Maehr put in the performance of their lives to win gold in the Mixed Dinghy.
By World Sailing
The Austrian pair impressed throughout the Opening Series, winning two races on their way to carrying a seven-point advantage into the decisive Medal Race.
Vadlau and Maehr lagged at the back of the fleet at the start of the final race, but recovered to move up the standings and cross the line in seventh, which was enough to secure Austria’s first Olympic gold in sailing since 2004.
Japan’s Keiju Okada and Miho Yoshioka topped the rankings early on in the regatta, but were unable to sustain their success, entering the Medal Race in third place overall. Knowing they needed a strong race, the Japanese crew sailed impeccably and crossed the line in third, securing a silver after Spain’s Jordi Xammar and Nora Brugman dropped out of medal contention entirely with a ninth placed finish.
Sweden’s Anton Dahlberg and Lovisa Karlsson also benefited from the Spanish crew’s result, moving up to take a memorable bronze after finishing fourth in the Medal Race.
Maehr said: “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.”
Okada said: “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.”
Dahlberg said: “We are nothing but happy. We kept it together when it mattered most and we are a strong team together. We trust each other and we managed to pull off a great Medal Race, but then we had a very important round in the second upwind.
“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.”
Karlsson said: “We’ve been fighting so hard for this. We’ve been fighting all week and we’re so proud of what we did.”
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