Allianz Sailing World Championships 2023: Ones to Watch - 470

Runners-up in the 2022 World Championships and European Championships, the Spanish duo are nearly always in the hunt for medals. Winners at Semaine Olympique Francaise de Voile in April, they had a rare slip with a fifth place at this year’s Europeans in San Remo, Italy, but expect the Spanish to be fighting hard in The Hague.

Xammar (the men’s bronze-medallist from Tokyo 2020) finds himself regularly up against his old friend and rival, the Tokyo 2020 silver-medallist Anton Dahlberg (SWE), now teamed up with another Tokyo Olympian Lovisa Karlsson.

While the Swedes struggle to match the consistency of the Spanish, Dahlberg and Karlsson did come out on top at the 2022 and 2023 European Championships, helping to put to bed some of the last-day disappointments experienced by Dahlberg.

Double Olympic bronze medallist Camille Lecointre (FRA) teamed up with former men’s world champion Jérémie Mion less than a year ago, but the French duo continue to get better and better, winning gold at the Paris 2024 Test Event in Marseille.

Such is the strength of the German 470 squad that the top three spots in the World Rankings were held by German teams in July 2023. While Luise Wanser and Philipp Autenrieth (GER) dominated the worlds in Israel last year, other teams have come to the fore in 2023.

Pick of a strong bunch are Simon Diesch and Anna Markfort (GER) whose second place at the Europeans and victory at Kiel Week marks them as strong favourites for a medal in The Hague.

A silver medal at the Paris 2024 Test Event in Marseille for the husband-and-wife duo of Malte and Anastasiya Winkel provides further evidence to the strength of German 470 sailing.