Sailing World Championship: The first champions are already celebrating

The first day of medal races at the World Championships in Aarhus had several surprises in store. Zsombor Berecz won the historic first gold medal for his country in the Finn dinghy at the combined sailing world championships of all Olympic disciplines, which are held every four years. As the Finn dinghy helmsman from Hungary crossed the finish line in the final, tears of joy rolled down his face. At the same time, he won the first gold medal awarded at this world championship in the picture-book bay of Aarhus.

There were celebrations, cheers, tears and mourning in Aarhus: the first medallists of the World Championships have been crowned. The replay of the live broadcast shows who came through brilliantly and who lost out

The 32-year-old, who was only able to get back into his Finn dinghy six weeks ago after breaking his thumb, said: "I'm a human being and I know what this means for me, my team and my country. It's a great achievement." His mishap had previously forced Berecz to sit out for over four months: "I had a great training day in Cadiz, was delighted and on my way home when I saw a wetsuit fall out of a van in front of me. I stopped on my bike, picked it up and saw that they had stopped at the next bend. So I went after them at full speed to give them the wetsuit back. One leg of the suit got caught in the front wheel and brought it to a complete stop. I did a forward somersault and broke my thumb in the process." Berecz also said: "If someone had predicted that I would win before the start of the World Championships, I wouldn't have believed it. I was out for four months and only had one and a half months of training before the start of the World Championships. But I made really good use of it and it paid off."

The Swede Max Salminen, who had started the medal race as the front runner on Thursday and had a supposedly solvable task on his hands, was left behind. However, the beaten favourite for the final told a friend after the race: "You can't be sad about World Championship silver. That would be a crazy benchmark." The Starboat Olympic champion (with helmsman Freddy Lööf in Weymouth in 2012) would have had to finish the final in fourth place or better to sail to gold. However, he only crossed the finish line in seventh place and never finished higher than fifth during the race. Bronze was secured by Dutch returnee Pieter-Jan Postma, who had only decided to make a comeback two months ago and, with his World Championship medal, forced a national Dutch qualification duel with the younger Nicholas Heiner in the battle for just one Olympic ticket.

The fact that Max Salminen was unable to win the gold medal he had hoped for was just the overture to another disappointment for the hopeful Swedish World Championship team. The reigning 470 European champions Anton Dahlberg and Frederik Bergström, who had started their medal final as leaders with a six-point lead, returned to the harbour badly beaten. They even came away empty-handed from the medal ceremony and had to settle for fourth place. Because they finished last in the final, France's Kevin Peponnet and Jeremie Mion won gold for France with third place. Tetsuya Isoaki and Akira Takayanagi from Japan came second ahead of Spain's Jordi Xammar Hernandez and Nicolàs Rodriguez Garcia-Paz. Hours after the final, Peponnet said: "That was so intense that my heart is still beating loudly."

In the women's 470, Japan's Ai Kondo and Miho Yoshida came out on top, giving the next Olympic organisers their second medal in just one day. Silvia Mas Depares and Patricia Cantero Reina took silver ahead of Great Britain's Hannah Mills, who won gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, and her new foresailor Eilidh McIntyre.