Stories and winners from the Vele d’Epoca di Imperia 2024
16 September 2024
Sailing Olympics: magic of Marta Maggetti, historic gold 24 years after Alessandra Sensini
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A stupendous blue, which almost looks like that of that distant September 23, 2000, when in the waters of Sydney the legend of Alessandra Sensini took definite shape.
And today as then it is still gold, the Italian sailing board is back in the Olympus with Marta Maggetti, the 28-year-old from Cagliari won the gold medal in the iQFoil class, the new flying board.
Marta Maggetti – A pulse-pounding regatta.
Marta Maggetti enters the final after her second place in the semifinals, achieved without too much pain in the regatta that gave her the certainty of the medal.
The wind is stable at 14-15 knots, with a consistent chop, and into the final with Marta enter two athletes on paper favored against the Italian, Israel’s Sharon Kantor and Britain’s Emma Wilson. Maggetti at the 30-second mark positioned herself upwind of them all for the first side to the beam.
Smooth start, with the Englishwoman trying to escape downwind and the Italian in an uncomfortable position finishing at the tail of the two opponents’ gas.
The Cagliari woman rounds the first mark third and starts the stern trying to attack and showing good speed.
At the start of the first stern, the Englishwoman jibes immediately, followed shortly after by Maggetti, who recovers some lengths in the stern while remaining third.
The Cagliari woman at the stern gate chooses the same mark as her opponents, deciding not to sweep, also because the wind seems to have turned to the left consistently making the second windward mark a bit more obligatory. But it is when the race for the Azzurra seems to be getting more and more difficult that the perfect tactical stroke comes.
Maggetti keels the layline well ahead of her two opponents and is the first to tack.
She is followed shortly after by the Israeli, while the Englishwoman, until then in the lead, lingers in a few fatal seconds.
In fact, Wilson ends up, also due to the rotation of the wind we mentioned, heavily over the layline, a little better the Israeli but the only surgical tack is that of Marta, who threads a double overtake and passes first at the second windward mark. She begins the last stern with bated breath but a substantial margin. Maggetti controls, gybes on the right layline, gybes again at the stern gate, and at that point there is no one left to thwart her.
Gold for Marta and the Italian sailboard, 24 years after Alessandra Sensini’s historic victory in Sydney (which was also followed by bronze in 2004 and silver in 2008).
At the end of a perfect week where the Cagliari native proved that she is now a solid athlete, not trembling in the most important appointment of her career.
Second place for Israel’s Sharon Kantor, third for Britain’s Emma Wilson.
She spoke little, smiled, had already won so much on the water, and would win again.
Until today, until the most important medal, this gold that puts her in the Olympus.
Bravo Marta.
And thank you for this dream. Mauro Giuffrè
Marta Maggetti – What we wrote about her in 2014
She is only eighteen years old, but she is already a certainty in tricolor sailing, so much so that many consider her the true heir to the “holy monster” Alessandra Sensini. Not for nothing was she one of the five candidates most voted at the end of the first round of popular vote of the TAG Heuer 2014 Sailor of the Year, along with Gilberto Nobili, Andrea Mura, Gaetano Mura and the Mario Caponnetto-Michele Stroligo pair, thus entering the running for win the main prize or one of three special prizes to be presented during the Champions Day, Friday, April 11, at the TAG Heuer VELAFestival in the Marina at the Genoa Fairgrounds (April 10-13).
WHY WE NOMINATED HER IS. considered the heir to Alessandra Sensini being a true boarding phenom on the strength of the Windsurfing Club of Cagliari: not for nothing at the age of 17 did he win the world title at the RS:X Youth World Championship in Civitavecchia in October 2013 and took silver at the Under 19 World Championship in Cyprus in July of the same year.
WHO MARTA MAGGETTI IS Marta Maggetti’s (born January 10, 1996) career is a continuous string of international successes. In 2010 he won world and European Under 15 titles in Techno 293. Things do not change as an Under-17 in 2012: he won both the World Cup in the Netherlands and theEuropean Championship in Spain. In 2013, in addition to silver at the Under-19 Worlds and gold in Civitavecchia, he won the CICO and all major national youth RS:X regattas.
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