Sailing

As a competitive sport, sailing was called yachting until the 21st century. The international federation, now called World Sailing (WS), changed the sport’s competitive name on 5 August 1996, in an attempt to limit the elitist connotation associated with the term “yachting”. The sport has been termed yachting at the Olympics through Atlanta 1996, and sailing, in effect, made its Olympic début at Sydney 2000.

Yachting actually began as a form of sailing, which has been practiced since antiquity as a means of transport. In the modern sense, yachting probably originated in the Netherlands, and the word seems to come from the Dutch “jacht” (for hunting), which was originally used for fast, light ships.

Sailing as a sport was brought to England by King Charles II about 1660, after his exile to Holland. International yacht racing began in 1851, when a syndicate of members of the New York Yacht Club built a 101-foot schooner named America. The yacht was sailed to England, where it won a trophy called the Hundred Guineas Cup, in a race around the Isle of Wight under the auspices of the Royal Yacht Squadron. The trophy was renamed The America’s Cup after the yacht, not after the United States, as is commonly thought.

As aforementioned, sailing is governed worldwide by World Sailing, founded as the International Yacht Racing Union (IYRU) on 14 October 1907, in Paris, France, and known as the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) from 1996 until 2015. As of January 2026, World Sailing has 150 affiliated national federations.

Yachting was first contested at the 1900 Paris Olympic Games. It made its next Olympic appearance in 1908 in London and has been on every Olympic Programme since that year. Sailing has had a very varied programme that is usually changed every few Olympiads as the popularity of various boats waxes and wanes. Women have always been allowed to compete in Olympic sailing with men, and the first woman to compete in the Olympics was a sailor, in 1900. At Seoul 1988, separate sailing events exclusively for women were introduced. In 1984, the popular sport of boardsailing was also added to the Olympic Programme, and a separate boardsailing event for women was placed on the programme for the first time in 1992.

As of 2024, the current sailing programme has events for men, women, and mixed crews. The classes fit into certain categories, including windsurfing and kiteboarding classes, one-person dinghies, two-person dinghies, skiffs, and multihull boats. However, the exact type of boat within these categories may now vary from Olympics to Olympics.

Sailing is contested at the Olympics in a series of fleet races, with points awarded for the placement in each race. In 2008 in Beijing, the so-called Medal Race was added to make the sport more suitable for television: these races feature only the top 10 boats, and take only 30 minutes.

Sailing has also been included in the Youth Summer Olympics since its inaugural edition at Singapore 2010, with events for boys and girls.

Through 2024, the medal table is topped by Great Britain (31 golds, 65 medals), followed by the United States (19 golds, 62 medals) and France (17 golds, 53 medals).

British sailor Ben Ainslie and Danish Paul Elvstrøm lead the men’s gold medal table, both with four gold medals. They are followed by Valentin Mankin (URS) and Jochen Schümann (GDR/GER), both with three Olympic golds. Ainslie has won a total of five medals at the Olympic Games, just as Brazilian sailors Robert Scheidt and Torben Grael.

Nine women have won two gold medals, led by Dutch Marit Bouwmeester, who managed to add a silver and a bronze medal to her two Olympic titles. Windsurfer Alessandra Sensini of Italy is the only other female sailor with a total of four Olympic medals.