Italy’s fourth Olympic sailing gold - ever

It’s difficult to underestimate the significance of Marta Maggetti’s victory in the Women’s Windsurfing. By winning Olympic gold in that dramatic winner-takes-all final, the 28-year-old becomes the winner of only the fourth Olympic gold for Italy in the long history of the modern Olympics.

The first came in 1952 with Agostino Straulino and Nico Rode’s victory in the Star keelboat, the next was Alessandra Sensini’s victory in women’s windsurfing at Sydney 2000, then Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti’s win in the Nacra 17 at Tokyo 2020, and now Maggetti brings it to four. With Tita and Banti already taking the lead of their foiling catamaran fleet after day one, they look set to add another gold to the tally in just a few days’ time.

Maggetti was humble in victory, knowing that she had profited from a sudden-death format that would be very familiar in other modern Olympic sports, but which has never before been seen in Olympic sailing. Whereas her teammates like Tita and Banti aim to build up a points advantage across all five days of their regatta, the new iQFOiL format is fast and exciting, and easy to understand for spectators, but it is somewhat brutal on the athletes.

Still, perhaps it’s fitting that it’s the Italian who emerges from the gladiatorial combat, from the Colosseum, with the Olympic gold medal. The key moment in the race came on the final upwind leg. While there was a choice of two gates to go around at the bottom of the course, all three decided to exit towards the left-hand side of the course.

This should have made it relatively straightforward for the leader Emma Wilson (GBR) to defend against Sharon Kantor (ISR) and Maggetti who was back in third. Now the big call was when to make the tack, the manoeuvre to turn right towards the next windward mark of the course. Tack too soon, and you undercut the layline, meaning you’d have to do an extra tack to get around the next mark. Every manoeuvre is costly compared with foiling at high speed in a straight line.

So when Maggetti was first to break away, it was a gutsy move. Would she make it in one? “I already knew from the Semi-Final that we should not be sailing for too long on starboard tack, and when I tacked I was quite confident that I could make it to the next mark,” she said in the press conference after the medal ceremony. If Maggetti’s confidence was justified, then the other two were in trouble. They’d be sailing extra distance for no purpose.

Kantor could have tacked any time she liked, whereas Wilson had slipped to leeward of Kantor’s line, which meant that the Israeli had tactical control of the Briton. Kantor waited a few more vital seconds after Maggetti’s move before she tacked. And Wilson, even when she was now free to tack, also waited a few more seconds.

Maggetti’s brave move to go early paid off, she rounded the next mark comfortably ahead and defended her lead to the finish. It was a masterful performance under pressure.

Having finished fourth at the Tokyo Games, and subsequently winning the 2022 iQFOiL World Championship, this is the crowning glory of Maggetti’s career. She paid tribute to the team around her. “The team is very unique, and the team is always amazing together, especially at the Olympics, here and in Tokyo. To have everyone around me, pushing me, supporting me, cheering me, it was super nice.”

written by Andy Rice