Toronto sailor Sarah Douglas qualifies a spot for Canada at 2024 Paris Olympics

Canadian sailor Sarah Douglas qualified a spot for Canada at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on Saturday after finishing in 24th position overall in the women's dinghy competition at the 2023 Sailing World Championships in The Hague, Netherlands.

The Toronto native qualified Canada one spot in the women's one-person dinghy category ILCA 6, which will get underway next August at the Marseille Marina in France.

"I'm really happy to have qualified Canada in ILCA 6 for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games," Douglas said in a release. "It's great to know that Canada will have a boat on that starting line and, hopefully, it will be me. It was a tough event, but hopefully, better for the future and I'm glad to have achieved that goal."

Douglas is coming off a stellar Olympic debut in Tokyo where her sixth-place finish in the one-person dinghy category was the best individual performance at an Olympics by a Canadian woman in the sport.

While the 29-year-old clinched a spot for Canada, no individual athlete met the Sail Canada selection process criteria to automatically qualify themselves in ILCA 6 for the 2024 Games.

In order to do so, the athlete with the lowest score combined position from the 2024 worlds in their respective classes and the 2024 Princess Sofia Regatta, added together, will be selected based on a sailing scoring system, which is lowest score first.

In the case of a tie, the athlete or team in the higher position, based on the sailing scoring system, at the 2024 Princess Sofia Regatta will qualify to be nominated. If an event is cancelled, it will be replaced by the 2024 European championships of the class.

'I was able to claw my way back'

Douglas got off to a rocky start last Sunday with a penalty in the first of 10 women's dinghy races, but was able to string together a bevy of solid results — particularly a fourth-place finish in the fourth race and a fifth-place finish in the sixth race — throughout the week to ultimately clinch the 16th and final Olympic spot available at the worlds in the ILCA 6 category.

"Starting with a penalty in the first race at the World Championships is not easy," said Douglas. "It's [definitely] challenging mentally as well to come back from that. I really pushed and tried, and I had a little bit of inconsistency in my racing, but I climbed up the leaderboard every day and did put together some pretty good races. It was a tough start, but I was able to claw my way back."

The 10-athlete medal race on Sunday - which Douglas did not qualify for - will wrap up the women's dinghy event and the worlds as a whole, with the men's dinghy medal race being the only other event on the schedule on the last day of competition.

The qualification window for sailing at the Paris Olympics opened with the sailing worlds this week, and will run though the rest of 2023 into 2024, with 312 quota spots up for grabs.

The 2023 Pan American Games taking place in in Santiago, Chile, from Oct. 28 to Nov. 5 will be Canada's next opportunity to add a qualifying spot at the Games, by virtue of being the top nation that has not already qualified.

Canada's last medal won at an Olympic Games was in Athens in 2004 when Mike Wolfs and Ross MacDonald collected silver in the men's star event, one of nine medals (three silver, six bronze) won by Canada in sailing at the Olympics.