Antonia and Victoria Schulteis survived a dramatic final day at the World Junior Sailing Championships in Como, Italy to seal a memorable bronze medal in the female category on Sunday.
The Schulteis sisters have been battling bravely throughout the whole week but Sunday provided a real test of character for the Maltese duo.
After the first three days of light to moderate southerly winds, the conditions in the finals on the last two days tension grew due to strong and very shifty conditions after day 3 and finally an accelerating southerly breeze on the last day.
These changes in sailing conditions favoured the heavier teams and led to a mix-up of the leaderboard in the gold fleet amongst the female teams.
A collision with a competitor through no fault of their own led to a capsize and finally to a discard of the first race on the last day for the Schultheis sisters.
Even after this setback, Victoria and Antonia managed to fight back and were able to secure the bronze medal with an overall score of 106 points.
Norwegian duo Pia Dahl Andersen and Nora Edland took the gold medal with 77 points while Gabriela Czapska and Hanna Rajchert, of Poland took the silver medal with 104 points, just two ahead of the Schulteis sisters.
In the 49er class, Richard Schultheis/Hugo Westberg climbed up the leaderboard steadily until they could not finish the last race due to an injury to the crew.
Nevertheless, they finished 14th out of 68 boats from 28 different nations.
The last day of racing started with an entangled crash with another boat and consequently some damage to body and boat. Luckily the two last races could be sailed and sealed the podium place.
Richard Schultheis/Hugo Westberg finished 14th despite a spectacular capsize in the last race.
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