Sailors Mateo Majdalani and Eugenia Bosco won silver for Argentina in the mixed multihull (Nacra 17) event on Thursday, the country's second medal at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Sailing remains Argentina's safest bet for reaching an Olympic podium. With the sole exception of Tokyo 2020, the country's sailors have won consecutive medals in a run going back to Atlanta 1996.
The last of those medals was a gold medal that was also in the mixed multihull, at that time with Santiago Lange and Cecilia Carranza in the boat.
Sailing as a sport has brought Argentina its second highest medal tally overall. In the history of the Games, the nation has won 11, second only to boxing with 24.
On Thursday it was Mateo Majdalani and Eugenia Bosco who did the honours. Both Olympic debutants, the duo took second place at the marina in Marseille.
Majdalani, 30, and Bosco, 27, have been competing as a sailing pair since 2017. The duo finished seventh in the Medal Race, the last event in which the top 10 boats competed, but their good performance in the first heats and the disqualification of Brits John Gimson and Anna Burnet allowed them to finish second overall.
The Brits were disqualified from the Medal Race for an early start.
The medal race was initially scheduled for Wednesday but was pushed back 24 hours because of a lack of wind.
Scoring a total of 67 points, Majdalani and Bosco were only beaten by the Italians Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti with 51 points.
Bronze went to New Zealand's Micah Wilkinson and Erica Dawson with 80 points.
This silver medal is the second Argentine medal at Paris 2024 after the gold won by José ‘Maligno’ Torres in the BMX Freestyle event.
Majdalani, from Buenos Aires, took his first steps in sports boats at the age of eight. At the Nautical Club of San Isidro he met Klaus Lange, son of triple Olympic medallist and Argentine sailing great Santiago Lange, who invited Majdalani to join the team when he was just 19.
Bosco hails from San Pedro, a town in Buenos Aires Province on the banks of the Paraná River. She started practising water sports with her brother and, after pairing up with Majdalani, won a silver medal at the Lima 2019 Pan American Games and then a gold medal at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games.
"We have reached a place that we dreamed of,” said Majdalani after confirmation of their silver medal. “We got there thanks to a lot of effort and an incredible commitment that she [Bosco] has."
Bosco said: "We worked for a long time to be where we are. I'm very grateful to the whole team and all the people who helped us to be here today.”
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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