The queen of Thailand has won a gold medal in sailing at the Southeast Asian Games, a regional competition being held in her country this month.<\/p>\n
Queen Suthida, the wife of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, competed in the mixed keelboat SSL47 category, on a 47-foot (14-metre) sailboat with nine other crew members.<\/p>\n
The queen, 47, served as tactician and helmswoman to lead the Thai team to victory in the waters off Pattaya, ahead of Malaysia and Myanmar.<\/p>\n
Her gold medal is to be presented to her today by King Vajiralongkorn, 73, whom she married in 2019.<\/p>\n
A communications graduate, Suthida worked as a flight attendant for Thai Airways before embarking on a career in the military.<\/p>\n
A keen athlete, she ran a half marathon in 2:13:40 this month in the capital Bangkok alongside Kenyan running legend Eliud Kipchoge.<\/p>\n
The queen led the Thai delegation at the opening ceremony of the SEA Games on 9 December in Bangkok.<\/p>\n
Suthida is not the first member of the royal family to win gold in sailing.<\/p>\n
King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the father of Vajiralongkorn, sailed in the fourth edition of the regional Games, held in Thailand in 1967.<\/p>\n
Competing in the OK class on a boat he built himself, Bhumibol won a gold medal alongside his eldest daughter, Princess Ubolratana Rajakanya, according to the SEA Games website.<\/p>\n
The Games end on Saturday, with host Thailand well ahead in the medal count, followed by Indonesia and Vietnam.<\/p>\n
Eleven countries were initially scheduled to take part, but Cambodia withdrew for security reasons after a border conflict with the host country reignited days before the opening ceremony.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The queen of Thailand has won a gold medal in sailing at the Southeast Asian Games, a regional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":198084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-198083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/198084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}