Sail Sydney – Oceania Olympic Qualifying Event

Eroni Leilua from Samoa in action at Sail Sydney – Beau Outteridge photo

Sail Sydney is held each year for all Olympic classes. It has an invited classes event following the Olympic classes which includes ILCA 4 and Open ILCA 6. This year Sail Sydney (9-15 December) was selected as the Oceania Olympic Qualification event. There were two Olympic country qualification places awarded in each of the ILCA 6 and ILCA 7 for Oceania sailors at Sail Sydney.

There were 26 ILCA 7s from 7 countries in the event won convincingly by Sam King TAS from Isaac Schotte QLD and Campbell Patton BER and NSW.

Australia and New Zealand had already qualified for the Olympics in the World Championships earlier this year in the Hague, Netherlands. The two Oceania ILCA 7 places were won by Eroni Leilua from Samoa who qualified his country with a 6th and Viliame Ratulu from Fiji.

In the ILCA 6 there were 14 in the Olympic event and 22 in the Open. The Olympic podium was all Australian which had already qualified for the Olympics at the Worlds in The Hague. Regatta winner was Elyse Ainsworth, second was Casey Imeneo and third Zoe Thompson. Greta Pilkington New Zealand and Sophia Morgan Fiji who finished 6th and 8th respectively qualified their countries for Paris/Marseilles 2024.

Full results of the event are Here.

The full list of Olympic sailing qualification events and countries qualified in the various classes is detailed in a Wiki Here.

Brooke Wilson AUS Greta Pilkington NZL and Sophia Morgan FIJ at Sail Sydney – Beau Outteridge photo