SHANDON sailor Anna Burnet says winning Nacra 17 silver at the World Championships in the Netherlands was a “massive bonus” at the end of a challenging week.
Burnet partnered John Gimson to the overall runner-up spot after the medal race on the waters of the North Sea, off The Hague.
The 2020 and 2021 world champions went into the final race some way behind the Italian front-runners, Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti, who they’d trailed since the first race of the regatta, and were unable to overhaul their rivals’ advantage, finishing 26 points adrift of the winners, who retained their 2022 title.
“To know we’d made it into the medal race and qualified the nation, we were super happy,” Burnet said after the medal presentation.
“To come away with the silver medal is a massive bonus.
The Hague, The Netherlands is hosting the 2023 Allianz Sailing World Championships from 11th to 20th August 2023. More than 1200 sailors from 80 nations are racing across ten Olympic sailing disciplines. Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing Competition places will
“We’ve chipped away at a really challenging week with the conditions and we’re really happy with the end result.”
Silver for the British pair, currently ranked number one in the world, comes after they finished third in the medal race at the Paris 2024 Olympic test event in Marseille last month, in which another Italian pair, Gianluigi Ugolini and Maria Giubilei, took gold.
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Gimson said: “We have our conditions and the Italians have their conditions, and we had more days of theirs than ours this week.
“But we train together, so hopefully we can keep pushing each other hard and we can get a little quicker in their conditions.”
The Swedish pair of Emil Jarudd and Hanna Jonsson took bronze, holding off the challenge of the host nation’s Bjarne Bouwer and Laila van der Meer.
Burnet and Gimson’s efforts helped Britain finish as the only nation to win five medals during the 10-day regatta.
The Hague, The Netheerlands is hosting the 2023 Allianz Sailing World Championships from 11th to 20th August 2023. More than 1200 sailors from 84 nations are racing across ten Olympic sailing disciplines. 107 Paris 2024 Olympic Sailing Competition places
Alongside the medal success Great Britain qualified for Olympic berths in eight of the ten Olympic classes, with only the mixed dinghy and men’s kite spots still to secure.
Mark Robinson, RYA performance director, said: “Our key aim was to qualify for Paris 2024 in as many classes as possible and we have achieved that in eight with opportunities to qualify the other two in the coming months after narrowly missing out.
“It’s been great to see the team’s hard work coming together towards this aim.”
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