Two Person Dinghy (470), Women

There was no heavy favorite in this event as the major races since 2016 had been won by a variety of crews. Great Britain had won gold at Rio in 2016 with a crew of Hannah Mills and Saskia Clark, and they had also been second at London in 2012. Clark had retired but Mills was back, now joined by Eilidh McIntyre, whose father, Mike McIntyre, had won gold in the Star class at Seoul in 1988. Mills and McIntyre had won the World Championships in 2019 and were silver medallists in 2017.

Other recent World Champions were Spain’s Silvia Mas and Patricia Cantero (2020); Poland’s Agnieszka Skrzypulec and Irmina Mrózek-Gliszczyńska (2017); and Japan’s hometown favorites of Ai Kondo Yoshida and Miho Yoshioka (2018). Poland was present at Tokyo but with Skrzypulec racing alongside Jolanta Ogar, who replaced Mrózek-Gliszczyńska, but who had sailed at London in 2012 with Skrzypulec.

Poland won the first two races and moved into the lead but Britain took race four to move up to second. Poland won race six and Mills/McIntyre won race seven and the two were virtually tied at that point. The Brits moved into the lead after race eight, and Poland dropped back to third going into the medal race, as they struggled in races nine and ten, and France’s Camille Lecointre and Aloïse Retornaz took over second.

None of the leaders featured in the medal race as Poland finished fourth, Great Britain fifth, and France sixth, but this was enough for Poland to leapfrog the French crew and move back up to the silver medal. France protested the medal race finish, claiming that Great Britain deliberately went wide around the last mark to allow Israel and Poland to move ahead of the French boat, but the protest was not upheld.

Great Britain’s gold medal meant the third medal in the event for Hannah Mills, who defended her Rio gold, after having won silver at London. In the silver medal position Retornaz was an Olympic debutante, but Lecointre repeated her bronze medal in this event from Rio, then racing with Hélène Defrance.

Men and women had raced 470 Class since the 1988 Seoul Olympics but this would be the last time for both events, as they would be merged into a mixed two-person dinghy class (470) at the Paris Olympics in 2024.