Final day drama awaits at San Pedro OCR

Yesterday marked the end of the qualifying series, where the fight to get into today’s medal races resulted in fierce battles at the top and middle of each fleet. Only the top 10 in each class move on to compete in the Final series, which will take place inside the breakwater on the L.A. Waterfront.

The battle at the front of the Nacra 17 fleet will make for one of the closest medal-race showdowns of the regatta. Great Britain’s John Gimson and Anna Burnet, who in six races haven’t posted a single score below second, continued to run down leaders Emil Järudd and Hanna Jonsson of Sweden. The two teams swapped first and second places in the final two races of the day, with the Brits posting 1-2-1 and the Swedes 7-1-2 on the day. Järudd and Jonsson wrapped the day in overall first, with Gimson and Burnet tight on their heels. The two teams are separated by just one point in the standings. Meanwhile, Dutch pair Willemijn Offerman and Scipio Houtman sit third overall, while France’s Tim Mourniac and Aloïse Retornaz remain firmly in the hunt.

For Offerman and Houtman, the final qualifying day was a study in recovery. The Dutch team said they struggled to get off the start line cleanly in all three races, but fought their way back each time.

“Today was a bit hard for us. We couldn’t manage to get off the start line correctly,” Offerman said. “We managed to get ourselves into the top five every time, but for sure our focus now is on the starts.”

The 49er standings also remained tightly packed at the top, with Germany’s Richard Schultheis and Fabien Rieger holding on to their run in first overall. The German team closed the day with back-to-back bullets after the opening race, giving them a strong lead heading into the Final.

Uruguay’s Hernán Umpierre and Fernando Diz clawed their way back into podium position for the second time this week after a difficult Day four had set them back to fifth. They now sit in overall second, while Great Britain’s James Grummet and Rhos Hawes are in third.

Umpierre’s and Diz’s rally started with two third-place finishes on Friday. The Uruguayans credited better starts and more decisive execution for the turnaround.

“Things were clicking a bit better,” said Diz.

“Thursday, we had a bit of a bad leg with the OCS,” added Umpierre, who also said they had to re-rig the tack line on their spinnaker mid-race after it broke loose under load.

“We were more trying to fix problems yesterday rather than sailing our race,” continued Diz. “Today we were properly sailing what we wanted to execute.”

The 49ers sailed the inner course for the first time this week which Umpierre said offered a welcome change from the heavily one-sided tactics seen on the outer courses.

“It’s a bit less boring than just sailing to the right side,” he said. “The inside gives you much more options to come back and play a bit with the shifts.”

The 49erFX fleet also sailed the inside track, where Sweden’s Vilma Bobeck and Ebba Berntsson emerged from the final qualifying day in first overall after trading bullets with Spain’s Paula Barcelo and Maria Cantero. Barcelo and Cantero won Races one and three, while Bobek and Berntsson won Race two, leaving the Swedish team atop the standings. Great Britain’s Freya Black and Saskia Tidey enter the Final series in third.

One of the day’s best comeback stories came further down the FX standings. Germany’s Marla Bergmann and Hanna Wille, who started their day outside the medal race cutoff, fought their way into the top 10 with three consistent finishes, building on some of their earlier low scores during the week. The pair finished their final qualifying race with just two points to spare to earn a place in Saturday’s Final.

“Waves, flat water, shifty, not so shifty – we had it all. And we’re happy to have made it into the top 10, just super close,” said Bergmann.

“We’re going all in tomorrow and fighting for the chance we have at the bronze medal,” added Wille.

With the new compressed scoring that takes place ahead of the final day, they enter the medal race with a shot at the podium. The German pair said that result is particularly satisfying, having experienced the other side of the format earlier this season.

“The luck is on our side with this compression,” said Wille. “We’ve faced it the opposite way around this season already, so it’s nice to also experience it from this position.”

Under the new World Sailing scoring format, qualification scores are compressed using two adjustments before the Final. First, no sailor may start more than nine points behind the competitor immediately ahead. Second, from third through tenth place, no sailor can begin more than 18 points behind the sailor in third overall. Once the scores are adjusted, they are carried into Final, where standard low-point scoring – with no discard – determines the final standings.

All three fleets return to the inside course today for the medal races which comprise two back-to-back 15-minute sprints starting at 2pm.

For those not in the top 10, the series ended yesterday. While they won’t compete in today’s Final, many shared that the experience of sailing at the 2028 Olympic venue offered them their first chance at learning about the racecourse and yielded important fleet intel that will guide their next two years of training.

Puerto Rico’s Isabella Calzadilla and Mercedes Delgado said they will leave the L.A. Harbour with valuable experience racing against the world’s best. The pair, who only began sailing together in January, found themselves in competitive positions off the starting line and used the week to identify where they can close the gap on pace.

“The main thing we learned is that speed really makes you a technical genius here,” Calzadilla said. “We were able to have really good starts, but it was just crazy starting next to a really good team, like Odile and Karlinde from the Netherlands. And then they just accelerate…a lot.”

For a team still in its first season together, racing alongside the world’s top 49erFX sailors provided a firsthand look at the level required to compete at the front.

“We’re really grateful to be able to be here with the best teams in the world,” Delgado said.

Racing concludes today, Saturday, 8 August, with the Medal Ceremony taking place at 6.30pm. Event details, entry lists, results, and schedules can be found at sanpedroocr.org and you can follow the regatta on Instagram at @SanPedroOCR.

In this second week of racing, 140 competitors from 20 countries are competing, including 27 Olympians. Among them are the winners of seven Olympic medals including one gold, five silver, and one bronze.

Text courtesy of San Pedro OCR. Images copyright Lisa Bronitt, Lexi Pline and Tom Walker.