Marit Bouwmeester qualified for the Paris Olympic Games in the LCA 6 class on the penultimate day of the World Championships. The 35-year-old Friezin can no longer be overtaken in Argentina by her competitor for the Games, Maxime Jonker.
Jonker had the only Dutch ticket for Paris within reach. However, the 28-year-old sailor lost her high ranking on Tuesday with a 29th place in the tenth race. She dropped to eighth place in the rankings. With only the medal race left, she can no longer achieve the fourth place necessary for qualifying.
Bouwmeester missed the medal race, but was still able to breathe a sigh of relief. “You want to enforce it yourself, but everything went wrong,” she explained afterwards via the sailing association. “I couldn’t get it to work. Maxime simply sailed very well and these were her circumstances. But in the end it still fell into my lap. Very nice that it is now final. I am now really, really relieved.” At the Games, Bouwmeester won silver (London, 2012), gold (Rio, 2016) and bronze (Tokyo, 2021)
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The disappointed Jonker looked back on her performance in Argentina with a positive feeling. “To be very honest, I never thought I had a chance at an Olympic ticket. That dream was already gone,” says Jonker. “I wanted to win the World Cup here and show what I can do. But if Marit is not in the top seven, you still start to believe in it. When you get so close and you don’t grab it, that’s so intense and sad. I’m disappointed about that, but I’m also very proud of what I have shown.”
The World Championships off the coast of Mar del Plata was the second and final event that counted towards qualifying for the Games. Her fourth place at the World Championships in The Hague last summer gave her a 7-point lead over Jonker.
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