Paris 2024 Olympics: Matt Wearn’s extraordinary comeback from couch to sailing gold medallist
Two years ago Matt Wearn was struggling to get off the couch, find motivation and eat enough food to stop kilos falling from his lean body. Today he is a gold medallist after a crazy day at sea.
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Just two years ago Matt Wearn struggled to get off the couch, find motivation and eat enough food to stop the weight falling from his lean body. Now he is a two-time Olympic gold medallist after a crazy day at sea.
Wearn was forced to do almost two complete races in frustrating light winds to secure gold when the first of the day was abandoned just minutes from the finish after he won a thrilling tacking duel with eventual silver medallist Pavlos Kontides from Cyprus.
After race official moved the course, Wearn replicated his covering tactics of Kontides before taking the lead to win the medal race and defend the Olympic gold he won in Tokyo.
“It was stressful but fun,’’ he said.
“Between the races I just had to compose myself. I saw Rafa (Trujjilo, his Spanish coach) and he just said tranquilo, tranquilo.
“I had to use that race being abandoned as motivation and not be that guy who had it in the bag and then threw it away.’’ An elated Warne grabbed an Australian flag to fly as he sailed back to shore as one of only three Australian sailors to win two gold medals in sailing by extending Australia’s Olympic run in the ILCA 7 class to four gold victories..
The Perth sailor revaled his old training partner Tom Slingsby had rung him in the lead-up to offer some words of advice as he had also gone into a medal race against Kontides at the London Olympics with a 14 point lead.
“He reached out which was pretty cool’’ Wearn said.
“He said Pavlos would be having nightmares about Australians with 14 point leads.
“He told me to have fun, enjoy it and give it a crack.’’
Wearn’s was a remarkable achievement after a debilitating case of long Covid coupled with chronic fatigue stopped the champion in his tracks post Tokyo, preventing him from walking, sailing and eating enough with 10 crucial kilos of weight and muscle dropping from his body.
“I struggled to pick myself up and get up and do stuff,’’ Wearn said of a horrid four months he somehow put behind him to defend his Olympic crown in Marseille.
“I had to rest. I was literally on the couch doing nothing for months.’’
That was plain for all to see on the tricky and often millpond-like waters off Marseille in southern France where his campaign in the single-handed ILCA 7 played out without the drama of his Tokyo campaign where he had to fight back from a disastrous start that almost ended his medal dreams.
But the former precocious teen sailing talent, now one of our Olympic greats, had to channel another super power to get his gold - patience - with long hours spent on the water and in the team tent waiting, often in vain, for enough wind to race.
Wearn took the overall lead on the second day of his racing and never looked back, recording a 12-2-1- (18 drop)-1-2-10-10 to enter the finale 14 points clear of his nearest rival Pavlos Kontides from Cyprus, a silver in the bag and a gold for the getting.
Wearn continued an extraordinary domination of the single-handed class by Australians which kicked off with Tom Slingsby’s win at the London Games in 2012 followed by Tom Burton’s win in Rio in 2026 and his first Olympic medal at the Covid delayed games in Tokyo three years ago.
Earlier, Sydney 20-year-old Grae Morris won silver in the new foiling windsurfer class.
Midas touch! Gold medal which inspired a teen sailor to dream big
No one knows better than Matt Wearn the power of being shown a gold medal - and allowed to touch it - as a kid.
It was a special moment that set Wearn on a bumpy journey to becoming a member of one of Australians sport’s most exclusive clubs as a two-time gold medallist and now planning to potentially race on to the 2028 LA Games and 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
Wearn, now 28, was just a lanky pre-teen already in the West Perth AFL development squad when he took up sailing and met two women with a gold medal.
After watching the 2008 Beijing Olympians Elise Rechichi and Tessa Parkinson win gold in the women’s 470 class on the television, he met them at his local club in Perth,
“It was my first real sailing memory watching them win,” said ILCA 7 sailor Wearn.
“You don’t know how much something like that can inspire a young kid.
“I have that hindsight now. I realise the impact you can have by meeting them.’’
Wearn will take a break from sailing for a while but is keen to campaign again for LA and then Brisbane.
“Brisbane is well and truly on the card. A home Olympics. You don’t get to do that often. It would be very special,’’ he said.
“As long as I am still competitive and my body holds up I’m in.’’
Leading into the Paris Games where Grae Morris also won silver in the foiling windsurfer, Australian sailors had collected 10 medals from the past three Olympics - more than half of them gold.
In London sailors raced off with gold and a silver, in Rio a gold and three silvers and in Tokyo two gold medals curtesy of Wearn and 470 guns Mat Belcher and Will Ryan.
Australia’s first sailing medals were a silver and bronze at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne with 2004 the only Olympics in the last 32 years where Australian sailors have failed to medal.
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