Ellie Aldridge saved Team GB blushes with Gold in the Formula Kite . . . The only gold for the British sailing team bringing the total to two medals.
Things were looking pretty dire going into the final scheduled day of sailing at Marseille Marina with just one medal on the board – Emma Wilson’s Bronze in the windsurf event.
As they day went on things became worse when John Gimson and Anna Burnet, sitting in third in the Nacra 17 final, were called OCS at the start of their medal race and then disqualified for failing to return and restart.
This left any possible improvement to the sailing team medal total to the two Formula Kite events.
In the men’s Formula Kite, Connor Bainbridge went out in the semi-final, which left the last chance of a medal with Ellie Aldridge in the women’s Final where she was into the four-competitor Final, but trailing Lauriane Nolot of France.
Nolot already had two race wins against Aldridge’s one win, with the first to win three taking the title.
And despite the stacked odds, Aldridge came good, winning the first race to extend the series with two wins each, and then capping a tremendous performance with another win and the Gold was hers.
She said: “I still can’t believe it, really it’s crazy. I don’t really feel anything at the moment. I’m so completely overwhelmed I don’t feel anything because I can’t believe what’s happened.”
That final Gold made a huge difference to Britain’s position on the Medal Table, pulling them from 14th up to 6th.
The final total of two medals – 1 Gold, 1 Bronze – was the worst since 1996 when they last failed to win a gold and finished with two silvers.
After ’96 British sailing moved into a golden period, topping the Medal Table in five of the last six Olympics.
So what went so dramatically wrong at Paris 2024?
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