Multihull (Tornado), Open

The defending gold medalists, New Zealand’s Chris Timms and Rex Sellars, who had dominated the 1984 class, were back and were expected to contend again. They were no match, however, for the French crew of Jean-Yves le Déroff and Nicolas Hénard who won three of the first five races and finished second in the other two, and did not even start the final race, their gold medal assured. Timms and Sellars comfortably won the silver medal over Brazil’s Lars Grael and Clinio Freitas.

With a different partner, Lars Grael would return in 1996 and win another bronze in this class. He was the brother of Torben Grael, bronze medalist in the Star class in Busan, who would eventually win five Olympic sailing medals. The Danish boat in 15th class was skippered by Paul Elvstrøm, competing in his eighth Olympics, and looking for his fifth gold medal, after winning the one-person dinghy class at four consecutive Olympics, 1948-60. This was the end of his remarkable Olympic career.