Olympic Ranking: Pavan & McBain slide into a qualifying spot

Back to the race for Olympic tickets, however, Chile’s Grimalt & Grimalt won the Xiamen gold to stay within the qualifying area. They are still the last team above the cut-off for Paris, but the distance between them and the next contender actually narrowed. The Chilean cousins netted 400 of the 800 points that came with their first place in China, while Cuba’s Noslen Diaz & Jorge Alayo, who registered a ninth-place finish, added the entire 460 earned points to their total and rose to within just 40 points from the Grimalts. The Cubans have one more tournament to play to reach the required minimum of 12 qualifying events and that means one more “free” tournament, in which they will net the entire amount of points earned.

Xiamen silver medallists Youssef Krou & Arnaud Gauthier-Rat are still far below the general cut-off in the Olympic Ranking, but as representatives of the Paris 2024 host nation they are in competition with the other French teams for the one berth granted to their country. With their result in China, Krou & Gauthier-Rat consolidated their status as the highest-ranked French pair, widening the distance to Julien Lyneel & Remi Bassereau to 860 points and to Arthur Canet & Teo Rotar to 920 points. Before Xiamen, the three French duos were spread within a range of only 160 points.