Swedish sailors once again show that they are among the absolute world elite. A bronze medal was won on Thursday during the Olympic Games sailing events in Marseille by the pair Lovisa Karlsson and Anton Dahlberg.
Earlier during the Games, Rebecca Netzler and Vilma Bobeck sailed home a silver.
Fourth in the world
Before the Olympic Games, Sweden was in fourth place in the number of sailing medals, where successful Great Britain had the most (63), followed by the USA (61), France (51) – and then Sweden with 37. Now the number is up to 39. And the three aforementioned have, at the time of writing, taken an additional bronze each.
Sweden gets the most out of the limited resources that an Olympic sailor has, says national team captain Magnus Grävare, himself a former Olympic sailor.
It's basically existence minimum. You get some stipend, some from the sailing federation. That's it, you can say.
He describes how sailors in countries like France, Germany, and Spain can be employed by the military and have entirely different economic conditions.
They can also receive bonuses from their federations when they take a medal, something that is not given to Swedish sailors.
It's clear that the economy is a huge important issue if you're going to get everything together. It's central, says Anton Dahlberg.
Missed once
Despite this, Sweden has only missed an Olympic medal once during the 2000s – in Rio 2016.
What we do well is that we manage to get them to hold on once more, says Grävare about the Swedish sailors.
Thanks to good support, team spirit, and getting people to think it's fun.
The Swedish pair Dahlberg and Karlsson also ensured that Sweden reached the goal set by the Swedish Olympic Committee of ten medals in Paris, since the table tennis team had already secured at least one Olympic silver.
