It was an anxious wait for sailor Zoe Thomson in the few days following her world cup series success in Spain. She had won the silver medal for the second year running, but the real prize was yet to be awarded.

She knew that on the other side of the world in Sydney, the Australian Olympic Team were deciding her fate.

The International Laser Class Association 6 Olympic selection had boiled down to a choice between two Western Australian athletes who had both met the baseline criteria.

The regatta in Palma, known as the Trofeo S.A.R. Princesa Sofia Regatta, was the last chance for the Australian sailors to lay their claim to a spot at the 2024 Olympic Games. Thomson finished second, 2 points ahead of Elyse Ainsworth, her rival for the selection.

Unlike a lot of sports at the Olympic Games, sailing has a brutal selection standard where each country is only allowed to pick one team to compete in each class. The ILCA6 is a singlehanded dinghy, which means there is only a single spot up for grabs. At the Olympic level, the ILCA6 is only sailed by female athletes. You must be the very best female ILCA 6 sailor in your country. It’s an incredibly high bar.

While the Australian sailors are all in direct competition for selection, Thomson says it is a very productive environment where they push each other to improve and rise to new levels. Towards the business end of the campaign, she says the sailors naturally keep more to themselves, but maintain a good understanding and mutual respect.

Thomson was on a bike ride when she got the phone call to say she was going to Paris.

“It was a surreal moment,” she says.

A combination of happiness and immense pride that all her hard work had paid off. She was going to be an Olympian, the pinnacle of sporting accomplishments.

She says she it’s going to be a big opportunity to learn and progress in her career. Her target is to become Australia’s first individual female medallist.

Thomson was introduced to sailing as a young girl, when she spent her weekends down at East Fremantle Yacht Club watching her older brother. After doing her time sitting on the riverbank in the sunshine, she finally got her opportunity to get out on the water when someone needed a fill in crew. A week later, she was completing a summer sailing school course and she never looked back.

Thomson spent her early days sailing on the river at East Fremantle Yacht Club and Royal Freshwater Bay Yacht Club. Photos: Supplied.

From there, it was a natural progression into the Western Australian Institute of Sport, as she competed in a number of national and international regattas. However, Thomson thinks her path to the Olympics is a bit different to normal.

“I wasn’t really the kid with the cliché dream who at eight years old aspired to go to the Olympics. For me the fire just started getting bigger and bigger,” she says.

It wasn’t until she lost the selection for Tokyo Games in 2021, that she discovered how much she really wanted it.

Due to COVID 19, in the lead up to the Tokyo games, the Australian sailors were all forced to train in their home waters. For Thomson, this was an extremely positive experience because it allowed her to train extensively with ILCA7 Olympic Gold medallists Matt Wearn and Tom Burton. The ILCA7 is the equivalent of the ILCA6, but for the male athletes. It has a slightly larger sail design.

She says it was game changing to see their intensity and gold medal mindset, where everything they do is narrowly focused on contributing to their success.

She says focusing on the present is a key part of her strategy in performing under enormous pressure. In addition to Wearn and Burton, Thomson was also inspired by another Australian Olympic Gold medallist, Tom Slingsby. She remembers watching a post-race interview where he gave insight into his mentality. He was solely focused on getting one metre out of every wave, only concerned with his immediate surroundings. Instead of getting caught into the trap of thinking about the whole series, she says it’s important to only focus on each individual race and what she can do to put herself ahead.

“I really do want to be in the fight, and I want to get a really good result, not only for myself, but for everyone that supported me.”

Nia Jerwood & Conor Nicholas

Another pair of Western Australian sailors, and long-time friends, Nia Jerwood and Conor Nicholas are also on their way to the big dance in Paris.

They are competing in the 470, a double-handed boat which has been changed to a mixed class.

For Jerwood, who is the skipper, it will be her second time at the Olympic Games, after competing in Tokyo in 2021 with female crew Monique de Vries. However, her first time was tarnished by COVID 19 restrictions.

Jerwood is excited to immerse herself more in the experience this time by going to the Olympic village and watching other events. She is also allowed to bring her family along with her which wasn’t a possibility in Tokyo.

In terms of the racing, Jerwood says she is even more determined to succeed after performing below her expectations in 2021, finishing 16^th.

“It also takes away a little bit of the fear of failure, because I have performed poorly on a world stage and I got through it,” she says.

For Nicholas, the crew on the boat, Paris will be his debut at the Olympic level. He says it is special to see his hard work over the years finally coming off, but he insists that there is still plenty of work to do.

“We’ve still got just over two months and you can do a lot in preparation in two months to really excel at the games. That’s the goal. We don’t want to go there just to compete, we’re there to fight for medals, and that’s what excites me.”

The pair have known each other since they were young kids sailing Optimists together at Fremantle Sailing Club.

Jerwood was born into a sailing family. Her mother was pregnant with her while she was sailing in a world championship of her own. Boats have always been in her blood.

However, it wasn’t all smooth sailing early on. Being the youngest of three, she wasn’t allowed to go on the water at first, being forced to watch from the shore while her older siblings were out having fun.

“I was a little bit of a cry baby,” she says.

For Jerwood, going to the Olympics has been a lifelong dream. Seeing Western Australians Tessa Parkinson and Elise Rechichi win the gold medal in the 470 at the 2008 Olympics in China, was the moment that sparked her inspiration.

Another key moment in her journey was when Arthur Brett, an Australian Olympic coach with legendary reputation in the world sailing community, said he believed she was good enough to go to the Olympics. He was the first person to ever tell her this, and it made a big impact on her.

A few years later she was sitting down with her coach Belinda Stowell, another local Olympic gold medallist, and writing down on a piece of paper her goal to go to the Olympics. She even mapped out a rough plan of the year she hoped to be selected to the Olympic team and what regattas she needed to complete to qualify.

Like Jerwood, Nicholas had his heart set on going to the Olympics from a young age.

He vividly remembers the first time he ever went sailing.

He was five years old at South of Perth Yacht club when he was asked to crew on a Pelican. He couldn’t say yes fast enough. After quickly running over to his mum and dad to check that he wasn’t going to get grounded, he pulled on a wetsuit ten sizes too big for him and hit the water.

“I couldn’t have been more in love with the sport from there,” he says.

He remembers watching Tom Slingsby win the ILCA 7 2012 gold medal in London and realising that was the path he wanted to follow.

Nicholas transitioned into Optimists and then the ILCA 6 where in 2015 he won the Youth World Championships. He later switched to 470s to partner up with Jerwood.

The pair had briefly sailed 420s together, the junior boat to the 470, but they never imagined it would become a permanent partnership, due to the class previously having a separate fleet for male and female sailors.

“The path changed a little bit, just how life moves, but the goal never changed,” he says.

Nicholas thinks the racing and the Olympic experience will be something he never forgets.

“To share this regatta with Nia is going to be special, and it’s funny, I still remember the first time sailing the 420 together. Who would have thought we’d be standing here now.”

The duo are heading into the Olympics with some solid results under their belt, including 6^th at the 2023 Olympic Paris Test Event, 13^th at the 2023 European Championships, and 15^th at the 2023 World Championships.

Matt Wearn

Matt Wearn is the fourth West Australian sailor going to Paris, and he is going in with the pressure of being the heavy favourite. Wearn is the reigning Olympic gold medallist and world champion in the ILCA7.

Australia has a stranglehold over the event, winning the last three gold medals in 2012, 2016, and 2021. Wearn followed in the footsteps of fellow Aussies, Slingsby and Burton, storming to a comprehensive victory by 29 points in Tokyo.

He is undoubtedly the one to beat, but Great Britain’s Michael Beckett may rival him for gold.

For a while it didn’t look like Wearn was going to make it to this year’s Games. He suffered from long-COVID in 2022, which forced him out of action.

In an interview with the Australian Sailing Team, he said, “2022 was tough. In a year where I was looking forward to taking the momentum of the Games through to this campaign it was all taken away by a series of illnesses which ended my season.”

But Wearn has bounced back, winning the 2023 Paris Olympic Test Event, the 2023 World Championship, the Australian Sailing Male Sailor of the Year Award, the Australian Institute of Sport Male Athlete of the Year Award, and the 2024 World Championship.

He has his sights firmly set on back-to-back Olympic gold medals.

Western Australia has heritage in producing elite level sailors, and with four athletes competing at this year’s Olympic Games, there is no sign that the pipeline is slowing down.

“It’s the legacy,” Thomson says.

With so many champion sailors in the state, young WA sailors are spoiled for choice of role models.

Jerwood says the pristine river and ocean sailing conditions and the structured Olympic pathway created by husband-and-wife team Arthur Brett and Belinda Stowell, are also major factors contributing to WA’s success.

The Olympic Games in Paris will be another opportunity to add to the state’s wealth of history in sailing.

“There’s too much to be excited about,” says Conor.