Master mariner Matt Wearn has an unassailable lead as he plots to defeat another hostile fleet and win back-to-back Olympic gold medals. Editor at Large Louise Evans pores over his game plan.
Of the 40-plus sailors who’ll enter the battle at Marseille, about 12 will emerge as leaders. Five of those will survive the fight to finish first. Only one can win. Matt Wearn is planning on being the one.
To be that one, Wearn will have to withstand everything mother nature throws at him as he yet again out-thinks, out-manoeuvres and out-classes the world’s top solo sailors in the bay of Marseille at the Paris Olympics.
Being the Olympic and dual world laser champion at just 28, Wearn has learned how to bend the wind and the will of a warring fleet. But it’s more elaborate than that.
He also has to survive 10 races held over six days of Olympic competition plus a double-point medal race at the end.
The course for each race may differ because of the prevailing wind conditions. No wind, no racing. So Wearn also has to be patient and play the waiting game.
Whole days may pass with no racing and then he’ll have to pull out three back-to-back races that can last up to an hour each. The mental and physical stress would test the strength of Neptune.
Wearn competes in the unsexy sounding ILCA 7 class. ILCA stands for International Laser Class Association. It’s a one-man dinghy that’s 4.23m long with a single sail and hull. Wearn loves it because “the racing is as pure as you can get”. “It’s very tactical at the big major events – the world championships and the Olympics. There’s no advantage with the equipment,” he said. “So it’s all about the sailor and what he can do.”
The supplied dinghies add an X-factor to the event. It removes technical advantage but no two boats are built exactly the same. They’re man made, there’ll be little differences in weight and rigging so “it’s the luck of the draw”.
Wearn describes himself as a tactical sailor who studies the numbers, stays in control and leaves little to chance.
“You try to predict the conditions as much as you can. We have meteorologists and experts and coaches to help us understand the wind. You try to get the best understanding before you go out on the water,” he said.
“Once the race starts it’s up to your intuition to figure out what the wind is doing to the water. You try to predict how the wind is going to bend around a point or an island. It’s 80 per cent prediction and then 20 per cent what you see and feel.
“If you’re waiting until you feel it, you are going to be behind. You have to try to see as far ahead as possible to know what’s coming.”
What’s coming is a game of survival – and that’s just at the start.
Imagine the beginning of the Sydney to Hobart yacht race but with tiny boats and solo sailors all trying to catch the best wind and position to shoot over the start line. It can be chaos and there’s always the chance of suffering a glancing blow.
Wearn believes that being the kid from down under who holds the reigning Olympic and back-to-back world championship titles takes some of the pressure off him. But his world domination also serves to narrow the focus of every challenger bent on dethroning the young Australian conqueror.
“The aim at the start is to survive and get off cleanly, it can be quite a fight trying to use that good boat speed to get clear,” Wearn said. “It can also become a traffic jam in a carpark.
“I like to sail free and clear, my style and tactics is to be in control of the fleet and not too close to other people.
“If you round that first mark and you are in the first couple of boats you take a sigh of relief.
It’s more effortless to be in front and racing hard. That’s pure sailing.
“But the stress on your body doesn’t let up. You can’t take your foot off the throttle. It’s full on.
“Mentally you are playing a chess game with your competitors. You’re trying to figure out the wind and position yourself, to be the first person to get the shift and the new breeze.
“At the same time you are trying to manipulate other competitors into positions so you can control them.”
What Wearn can’t control are the light to moderate conditions and gentle sea breezes at the Olympic venue, the west-facing Marseille Marina on the Mediterranean 750km south of Paris.
Wearn grew up in a sailing family adept at handling strong winds off the Royal Perth Yacht Club on the Swan River which empties into the Indian Ocean at Fremantle.
As a kid he flirted with football and was drafted into the West Perth AFL Development Squad. But the boats v footy boots battle was won when Wearn was just 13, after Perth sailing pair Elise Rechichi and Tessa Parkinson arrived back from the Beijing 2008 Olympics with gold medals in hand.
Wearn was in awe. Playing at the MCG suddenly seemed like a fish bowl compared to the Olympics and sailing around the world.
“Elise and Tessa came to our club with their medals. Being a young kid it was really inspiring,” he said. “They gave me the understanding of where sailing could go. My goal shifted. I decided I wanted to bring home a gold medal for Australia.”
He didn’t have to wait long. Over the past seven years Wearn has proved that if he’s at the start line at a major regatta – he’s going to medal if not win.
He celebrated his 22nd birthday in Croatia with a bronze medal around his neck from the 2017 world championships behind second-placed Australian Olympic champion Tom Burton.
Over the next three years from 2018-20 Wearn collected three consecutive world championship silvers, proving he could medal in all conditions – Denmark, Japan, Melbourne.
Then the big one – Olympic gold in Tokyo 2021, the third consecutive gold for Australia following the success of fellow green and gold sailors Tom Slingsby in London 2012 and Burton in Rio 2016.
Catching Covid and then being diagnosed with Long Covid wrecked Wearn’s 2022 season and forced him to withdraw from the Mexico world championships suffering mental and physical fatigue. It bent him but didn’t break him.
His recovery, when it finally came, was spectacular, winning the Olympic test event in July 2023 at Marseille.
“The course inside Marseille bay is quite tricky,” he said. “It’s enclosed with waves bouncing back off rock walls and islands which makes the water messy and disturbed. It’s harder to read. But it’ll be warm and hot like a Perth summer so I am looking forward to that.”
Then he raced away with back-to-back world championships in August 2023 in the Netherlands and 2024 in Adelaide, making him an unassailable gold medal prospect for Paris.
Matt Wearn: Master Sailor
| Gold | 2024 | World Championships | Adelaide | ICLA 7 Laser |
| Gold | 2023 | World Championships | The Hague | ICLA 7 Laser |
| Gold | 2021 | Olympics | Tokyo | Laser |
| Silver | 2020 | World Championships | Melbourne | Laser |
| Silver | 2019 | World Championships | Sakaiminato | Laser |
| Silver | 2018 | World Championships | Aarhus | Laser |
| Bronze | 2017 | World Championships | Split | Laser |
“Once you get to the top level of your class you have to be good in all conditions,” he said
“Most sailors have a wind preference. Being from Perth I am used to the windier conditions and I prefer to sail in that. You get a lot of light air in Europe. You have to learn to enjoy the lighter winds too.”
Coach Rafa Trujillo, the 2004 Athens Olympic silver medal-winning Spanish sailor, has been helping Wearn bend the thin air as well as bringing a welcome Latin flair to their training.
“Rafa has brought a different perspective to lighter sailing,” Wearn said. “He brings more excitement to training and racing too and more emotion out on the water.
“When we win he doesn’t hold back. When things aren’t going well he doesn’t hold back. You’re never guessing what he’s thinking. He’s great on the communication side.”
Wearn has been living and training in Belgium since 2022 with his Belgian wife Emma Plasschaert, a dual world champion laser class sailor.
His off-water training includes building fitness by strengthening his core and quads in the gym and on the bike. But most training is on the water, around Europe, along the Mediterranean and at the Marseille Olympic course.
After six days of racing at the Olympics, playing the waiting game, the chess game, the switching on-and-off game, Wearn expects the leaders who’ll be fighting to finish first will be a fierce horde of Vikings who are all a bit longer in the tooth.
They include Britain’s world silver medallist Michael Beckett, 29; 2012 Olympic silver medallist from Cyprus and dual world champion Pavlos Kontides, 34; Croatia’s dual Olympic silver medallist Tonči Stipanović, 37; German 2018 world bronze medallist Philipp Buhl, 34; and Norway’s Olympic bronze medallist Hermann Tomasgaard, 30.
But who’ll be the one?
The master mariner doesn’t hesitate. Having won everything, he’s now building a legacy and no sailor has been able to win back-to-back Olympic titles – yet.
“There will be a lot of pressure and stress but I’m looking forward to that. If I sail the best I can on each day I’m hoping that will be enough to bring home another gold medal.”
Louise Evans is an award-winning journalist who has worked around Australia and the world as a reporter, foreign correspondent, editor and media executive for media platforms including The Sydney Morning Herald (eight years), The Australian (11 years) and Australian Associated Press (six years in London, Beijing and Sydney).
A women sports’ pioneer, Louise was the first female sports journalist employed by The Sydney Morning Herald and the first female sports editor at The Australian. Louise went on to work at six Olympic Games, six Commonwealth Games and numerous world sporting championships and grand slam tennis events.
Louise is the Founding Editor of AAP FactCheck, the Creator of #WISPAA – Women in Sport Photo Action Awards and national touring Exhibition and the author and producer of the Passage to Pusan book, documentary and exhibition.
In 2019 she was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) Queen’s Honour for services to the media and sport and named an Australian Financial Review Top 100 Woman of Influence for services to the arts, culture and sport.
In 2020 she won a NSW Volunteer of the Year Award plus the NSW Government Community Service Award for her women-in-sport advocacy work.
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