Defending ILCA 7 champion wins gold after a dominant medal race in Adelaide

Australia’s Matt Wearn has clinched his second ILCA 7 World Championship in the last 12 months after a strong week of sailing. Wearn had a consistent event from start to finish, only once falling outside the top six in any given race, and finished with a dominant victory in the 10-boat medal race today.

He said he had a great sense of relief after the win today and that it was also great to be able to celebrate the victory with his parents, who made the trip to Adelaide to support him.

“It’s always pretty surreal this soon after the race, but I certainly got a few tingles there during the race as well, especially when I rounded the top mark in first. I figured I obviously couldn’t go into cruise control, but the job was almost half done then,” he said.

“It’s surreal. To win a World Championship in itself is incredible, but to do it back-to-back and in the Olympic year as well makes it feel even more special. There’s definitely a little bit more emotion in it being in Adelaide, and in Australia, not many people can say they’ve had a home World Championship and this is probably as close as I’m gonna get to it, so it feels incredible.”

The wins sets Wearn up for the Paris Olympics as he considers the potential of back-to-back Olympic Gold Medals.

Finishing with Silver at this regatta was Norwegian Hermann Tomasgaard, who also had a consistent regatta and slid into second ahead of Great Britain’s Micky Beckett on the penultimate day.

“I was guaranteed a medal, and of course, it always would have been a little bit annoying losing the second place, but at the end of the day my goal was to take a medal here,” he said.

“So I was coming into today knowing I would be happy with whatever result, which is kind of a good feeling going into the medal race. I knew Micky (Beckett) and Matthew (Wearn) had been almost unbeatable all season last year, and now I finally managed to split those two up, but Matthew in the medal race was just unbeatable. He was going so quick off the line.”

After a second-place finish at the 2023 World Championships at The Hague, Micky Beckett finished in Adelaide with a Bronze medal in what he said was a challenging medal race.

“Obviously, everybody’s come off the back of five pretty large days and today it’s just one little last bit,” he said.

“The race time is about 20 minutes where normally we have a target time of 50 minutes, so you cannot sit up for one second. It’s a real bash, and you just give it everything you’ve got. It’s quite an unforgiving race, there’s absolutely no space, no one’s giving any quarter, but it’s good fun to do because it’s something different.”

Seven Olympic qualification spots will also be granted and are pending formal confirmation by World Sailing.

Text courtesy of Harry Fisher, Down Under Sail/Edited by ILCA, images courtesy of Jack Fletcher, Down Under Sail