Historical bronze medal for Canadian Sailing Team's Lewin-LaFrance at 49er, 49erFX & Nacra 17 Worlds

Historical bronze medal for Lewin-LaFrance Canadian sailing team at 2025 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships © Sail Canada

Canadian sailors Antonia and Georgia Lewin-LaFrance from Chester, N.S., won the bronze medal in 49erFX at the 2025 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships which ended today in Cagliari, Italy, to become the first-ever medalists from Canada at that competition.

The performance put forth by the Lewin-LaFrance sisters is Canada's best-ever result at the annual 49erFX World Championship, which started in 2013 ahead of that sailing class being introduced into the Olympic program at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016. Canada's best performance prior to that had been a 6th-place result overall registered by Antonia and Georgia Lewin-LaFrance in 2021. They finished in 8th position at last year's World Championship.

"We're super, super excited about this bronze medal," said Antonia and Georgia Lewin-LaFrance. "It was a really challenging week, and that was shown by the fact that a lot of good teams had inconsistent score lines. We specifically had a challenging day on Saturday, which made us feel nervous about closing out the regatta today. But we're really, really happy and proud that we were able to deliver that performance today, and secure the medal. We're really proud to represent Canada and to have Canada on the podium this week. It's a good step for sailing in Canada, and we're really thankful for all the support that we receive."

Antonia and Georgia Lewin-LaFrance earned their spot for the last day of racing on Sunday, called the Medal Series, as the third-place qualifier. This year's World Championship, held over six days overall, featured a new format that was being tested ahead of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games and was designed to better promote the sport.

In Sunday's first race of the day as part of the Medal Series, i.e. the Gold umpired Race, Antonia and Georgia Lewin-LaFrance secured their spot in the 4-point race, the fourth and last leg of the competition, by finishing third out of the 20 boats that had qualified for the Gold umpired Race.

The 4-point race was reserved for the top four teams in the standings following all races presented so far in the competition. With all points earned from previous rounds starting back at 0 at that point, the four qualified boats received the following amount of points going into the 4-point race: Vilma Bobeck and Ebba Berntsson from Sweden earned three points as the team in first place overall, Paula Barcelo and Maria Cantero from Spain collected two points as the second-place team, Antonia and Georgia Lewin-LaFrance registered one point as the third-place team, while Freya Black and Saskia Tidey from Great Britain had 0 points as the fourth-place team.

The four teams faced off in the 4-point race, where the winner of the race received four points, while no other boats earned points. The Spanish team won the 4-point race, and therefore the gold medal for the competition, thanks to a total of six points, followed by the teams from Sweden and Canada.

"I think that the new format was interesting," said the sisters about the new competition format that was used this week. "It was fun, and we had the perfect conditions to try it out. But I think if we had been leading the overall standings going into it, we might have felt differently. The format is really new and it will be interesting to see what other people think about it."

Canadian results at the 2025 49er, 49erFX and Nacra 17 World Championships:

49erFX (/52)
BRONZE. Antonia Lewin-LaFrance & Georgia Lewin-LaFrance (Chester, N.S.)

Nacra 17 (/40)
25. Galen Richardson (Toronto, ON) & Madeline Gillis (Halifax, N.S.)

49er (/84)
53. Thomas Staples & William Staples (Beaconsfield, QC)
63. Will Jones (Burlington, ON) & Arie Moffat (Kingston, ON)