Great Britain’s Hannah Snellgrove and Australia’s Matt Wearn topped the ILCA 6 and ILCA 7 fleets respectively as six days of racing at the future L.A. 2028 Olympic venue wrapped up on Friday. A new Final Series format, featuring two short high-intensity races for each class, produced tightly contested battles on the waters outside the Port of Los Angeles.
In ILCA 6, American Charlotte Rose and Ireland’s Eve McMahon entered the final day in third and fourth, respectively, after a difficult Thursday, while Dutch sailor Maxime Jonker had surged into second overall after putting together two of her strongest races of the regatta.
In the hard-fought medal race sprint, McMahon climbed her way back into the top three, winning bronze, with Rose also jumping up a spot to take silver at the Olympic host venue in her home country. Hannah Snellgrove held onto the overall lead to earn gold, revealing that the victory was especially meaningful to her.
“Some wins mean more than others,” the 2024 Olympian shared. “It’s special to win on Olympic waters two years out from the Games, but this one is particularly emotional for me as it’s my first time back racing since losing my dad a few weeks ago. This gold medal is for him.”
Snellgrove started the week in third before falling to seventh on the second day of racing, ultimately grinding her way back up the leaderboard with inspired finish after inspired finish.
In ILCA 7, Australia’s Matt Wearn sealed the overall win after a week-long battle at the top of the fleet. Cyprus’ Pavlos Kontides took silver.
“It feels good to be winning at the Olympic venue,” said Wearn. “It’s a nice way to kick things off.”
Great Britain’s Micky Beckett, who closed the week with a bullet to secure his place on the podium in third, said that sailing in the L.A. Harbor offered up an important chance to begin scouting the subtleties in conditions that will play out when sailors return to San Pedro for the Olympic Games.
“The aim is always to go away having a good idea of what you need to practice,” said the Olympian and San Pedro OCR bronze medalist. “We’re not turning up here with everything perfect, but we are trying to go away with a rough idea that in our own time and over the European winter, we can have a crack at getting better at whatever is required to do well in these conditions.”
“The basics are easy. It’s the details that are hard and difficult to do well,” Beckett added.
Ireland’s Finn Lynch, who finished seventh in ILCA 7, said that after spending much of the week near the podium, the experience was an early step toward defining what a winning run at L.A. 2028 will require.
“When we debrief this summer and get all of our minds together, we’ll create a blueprint of what a gold medal performance will look like in 2028 and what we need to be able to nail,” Lynch said. “Then we can work backward from that.”
Great Britain’s Beckett, leaning into his experience at the 2024 Games, iterated that mastering the venue is going to be about more than simply identifying the favored side of the course. Honing the finer points, he said, is what will ultimately make the difference.
“The basics are easy. It’s the details that are hard and difficult to do well,” Beckett said.
The week highlighted the complexity of the future Olympic venue, with sailors experiencing everything from light and shifty conditions inside the break water to stronger sea breezes and challenging swells on the outside track, reinforcing the value of gathering knowledge at the venue two years before the Games.
As the boat park empties out to make way for the next event’s competitors, ILCA sailors have packed up their gear, but they’re also taking home important intel that will guide their training for the next 2 years of preparation for the 2028 Olympics.
Read more about the event here.
Report by Agustín Argüelles – ILCA | Source: Meredith Glacken – San Pedro OCR | Photos by Colin Grey.