skandia:star

Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson have won Star class gold on a thrilling final day of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Regatta today, leaving Britain’s sailors with their best Olympic medal haul for 100 years.

 Sydney 2000 Finn gold medallist Percy and Simpson, making his Olympic debut, went into the race two points behind Swedes Freddie Loof and Anders Ekstrom but with one eye also on Brazilians Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada behind them in third.

In an absolute nail-biter, Percy and Simpson executed a tactically perfect race, the Swedes being forced to gybe on the first downwind run and the Brits edging their noses ahead, a position they refused to relinquish for the rest of the race.

At times, Scheidt and Prada, who had taken the race to the rest of the fleet and built a big lead on the first lap, appeared to threaten the gold, meaning Percy and Simpson not only had to stay ahead of the Swedes but also finish in the top six. But as the Brazilians fell down the fleet, it became a straight head-to-head between Great Britain and Sweden and in a scintillating sprint to the finish line, Percy and Simpson surfed over the line in fifth place, with the Swedes 11 seconds behind in 10th for the gold to go to the Brits with a final tally 45 points overall.

Speaking immediately after the race, Percy, who also beat Loof to gold in Sydney, said: “It was unbelievable, so special. We felt good this morning, I knew we weren’t going to bottle it and we didn’t. It’s been a killer four years and I am so glad it’s behind me.”
Simpson added:  “I’m shocked and over-the-moon. This week and this year have been so hard and there are no words to describe how happy we are. For the last year, everything has been focussed on this week, we’ve worked so hard and it is just amazing. We’ve pulled it back from the brink and it’s all come good for us.” 
Loof and Ekstrom had to settle for bronze despite finishing on the same overall points – 53 - as Scheidt and Prada, the Brazilians snatching silver on account of them finishing higher up the fleet in the medal race than the Swedes. 

Percy and Simpson’s is Britain’s sixth sailing medal of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games with Ben Ainslie (Finn) and Yngling trio Sarah Ayton, Sarah Webb and Pippa Wilson winning gold on Sunday, Paul Goodison taking the top Laser prize on Tuesday, Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield clinching 470 men’s silver on Monday and windsurfer Bryony Shaw claiming bronze yesterday.

This surpasses the Brits’ medal total at the past two Games in Athens and Sydney where Britain won five medals apiece while the sailors’ feat in Qingdao mirrors the achievements of the British sailing team at the 1908 London Games. It also means for the third successive Olympics, Britain finishes the Regatta as the World’s top performing sailing nation.

Hi Everyone

Well, we have got through measurement!! We had a few small issues in the measurement of our boat but I am pleased to say they have been sorted. We had to add a small bit of filler to the top side of the boat which does not affect speed but is hassle and we were lucky that Peter Bentley, Our coach Sid and Derek Clarke(tornado Coach) have managed to get the boat fixed. Iain and I have managed to stay away from most of the work and focus on watching what has been happening on the courses.
Today , after racing was cancelled, we went out for a quick sail to check everything was ready for the race.  Luckily everything seems fine(touch wood!) and we are ready for tomorrow. The boat is going well, the sails look great and we are ready.
So this is it. We have been training really hard, not gone to opening Ceremonies so that we can focus on the job in hand. The last 2 months have flown by and we owe a huge thanks to Skandia for making this possible. We also are grateful to Nick Harrison, a great friend , whom has given up a lot of his time to help us get to this stage.

Hopefully we will see you all soon and tell you how amazing the Olympics has been. Certainly they have made a big effort, sadly we have been so focused on our job that we have not noticed much of what has been going on around us, but we will get some pics afterwards.
Take care all and fingers crossed!
Iain and Andrew

Dear All

We have just headed off to the team holding camp in Shanghai after 12 days more training in Qingdao. The video of the new boat launch hopefully will go on the website tomorrow , luckily at this holding camp we have an IT person who is skilled in such operations.

Training has been going well and in this period we were very fortunate to Have Ante Razmilovic and Briain Hammersley out sailing with us. Sadly we could only do 5 days with them due to the restricted access to the sailing water. It was great having them here helping and we owe them a big thanks! The new boat has been in the factory a for a while having the finishing touches done. The boat builder, Al Newton has been here working his socks off for the team and has been really great helping us get prepared for the event.

So, we are at the holding camp In Shanghai, relaxing and having a few team meetings. It is a fair way from the middle of the city and is very relaxing. Iain, me and Ben Ainslie braved the golf course at 06:15 this morning to check if we are still as bad at golf as a year ago. Sadly we were!!

We head back to Shanghai on the 5th, with us starting on the 15th. We are late  compared to most classes so are still in full preparation mode. Our measurement is on the 12th , so finger crossed , that all goes well and we are set for the off.

Better go, another team meeting to come!Hope you are all well. The racing is just around the corner now, we are prepared and just doing the final prep for the 15th. Many thanks for all your help and see you all soon.

Take care

Iain and Bart

Sorry everyone. Life has been really busy for last 2 months getting the campaign back on track.
 
The worlds where a nightmare and we have had to re focus and remind ourselves this year is all about China!
 
We went to Holland and slowly got our act together, suffering from to yellow flags for “Cheating” in the same race when leading both times, most frustrating. Anyway we moved on after a good chat with the Jury Members and managed to win the medal race.
 
Then it was off to Croatia, where our latest new boat was sailed for the 1st time. It was similar to our last Mader, but with a few small tweaks. Split is a wonderful place and we would recommend it to anyone. The sailing was trick and light with 3 days lost due to no wind. After getting used to the boat in the 1st race we managed to find some speed in the new boat. We finished with a 1,3,3 and only lost to the Brazilians by 1 point. So with a Silver medal at the Europeans we prepared for China.
 
Finally, we are feeling happy with our Kit! We are now in China and have done a good training session, 10 days of hard training. Nick Harrison has been here and coached us, he is away from his family for a month to help us and his help has been great. We feel we are moving forward fast with getting things right for China.
 
You have probably heard about the weed problems here in China and there are now 14,000 people involved in sorting the weed out. They literally throw people at problems here! There is now an Oil boom 37 miles long, off the coast to protect the sailing area!
 
We hope all of you are well, Iain has a bit of flu at the moment, but hopefully he will be better tomorrow to hit the water. We are doing a training regatta here with a few of the other boats just to get used to the conditions.
 
Sorry again for the lack of updates, we will strive to give you all more info leading up to the games. Thanks for all the support, we really appreciate it.
 
Andrew and Iain

10th April 2008

Hi all,

We are back in Miami for the Star Worlds. We have been here training for the last few months and sadly have had to borrow a boat. Luckily the Australians Ian Murray (Americas cup legend) and Andrew Palfery have a spare boat here and we are going to borrow it.

The one we have been using here is more designed for lighter winds of China and we saving it more for that. It has taken a fair amount of work to get the boat ready and  Nick Harrison has been here for 2 weeks nearly helping us sort the boat out. We really owe Nick a huge debt as he is taking time away from his family and work to help us out. So special thanks to his wife Anne!!! As per normal David Howlett is here supporting us at the event and doing the in event coaching.

The opening ceremony was done this evening after the practise race earlier today. It was very good with the national anthem of every country competing was played. This event is the final selection for deciding which countries qualify for the Olympics.There are 28 nations going for this last 4 spots so the rivalry is very big. For us, we are aiming to improve on last year’s 3rd place.

Hope all of you are well and looking forward to seeing you soon. Time to get some sleep so we are ready for the race. Thanks very much for your continued support and fingers crossed for this event.

All the best,

Iain Percy / Andrew Simpson
Follow the racing at http://www.starworlds2008.com/

Hi all.

We are back in Miami for the Bacardi cup. A Star regatta that has been held for over 80 years, it attracts a huge interest and there are over a hundred boats on the line. Today was a great day for sailing, sunny, 15Mph wind and a 2.5 hour race. We have Chris Brittle here giving up his time to coach us. He is a great help providing enthusiastic support and pushing us in the gym( sadly he is a bit stronger than us!!)

We had a good race and finished 3rd, catching up from 6th at the first mark.It was a tough race, Iain has been ill for the last 5 days and is still recovering. The new boat has had to go in the boat shed to have some alterations done. The alterations have helped and the boat feels considerably better. We are still not up to the speed of our old boat yet and are working hard with the designer to get it better. The boat will go back to the boat shed for more alterations after the event. We have been really supported by David Powys whom has spent a lot of his time helping us get this boat up to speed.

The event finishes on Friday and the boat will go  back in the shed. Anyway, I hope all of you are well and looking forward to seeing you soon. Thanks very much for your continued support and fingers crossed for the rest of the week

All the best

Iain and Andrew

Hi all

After the frustrations of sailing in the Miami OCR we are back in Miami. We have made some adjustments and are checking all is ok this week. We are sailing with the Irish sailors and Ross Macdonald is coaching us (Olympic silver medallist in the Star last time).

The boat is slowly getting better and we are working hard to find the speed we need. At this stage it would be easier to go back to the old boat but we feel there is potential.

We are planning to do more modifications to the boat next week and are very fortunate that Dave Powys is here. Dave has been shore boss for many AC and Volvo teams and we really grateful for his help.

Our next event is the Bacardi cup starting on the 2^nd of March and we are hoping the boat is more up to speed by then. Once all the teething problems are out the way we will have an official launch of the boat.

Anyway, we have just been the to the gym and better go sailing now, finally the sun returns to Miami after days of thunderstorms and strong winds.

Speak soonAndrew and Iain

4 February 2008

Firstly, apologies for not having sent our usual daily regatta updates from the Rolex Miami OCR.  If you were following the results online, you might have suspected that we had our hands full during the course of the event, where we finished 13th overall.
Our brand new boat wasn’t playing as nicely as we’d have liked – we were painfully slow, particularly upwind – which gave rise to some pretty long days out on the water as we made use of the daylight hours after racing each day to test and tweak and try to find out where things were going wrong.
There’s been a mistake with the boat somewhere along the line, so now we have a job to do in trying to establish exactly what that is and try to put it right before the equipment testing deadlines we’ve set ourselves for the World Championships in April and for China.

It’s pretty frustrating as our pre-regatta training in Brazil with Robert Scheidt went quite well – but we’ve got some of the best brains on the case.  Juan K and the team in Valencia are holding back no resource in trying to find what the problem is, and that’s why this is exactly the right time of year to be doing all this testing, so that we can get any issues ironed out now.
As for the racing itself in Miami, we made a few mistakes but were actually sailing pretty well, all things considered.
The regatta’s over, but the work continues – we’re training with our Irish friends one week on, one week off in Miami pretty much right through until the Worlds, taking in the Bacardi Cup in early March to get in some race practice.  Between training stints, coach ‘Sid’ Howlett and our friend Dave Powys will be helping us out with getting the boat into the boat shed to make the necessary alterations which will bring it up to speed.
Thanks to all for your continued help and support.

All the best,
 

Iain Percy / Andrew Simpson

28 January 2008

Well, we’re here in Miami for the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta – a main fixture in the international Star sailing calendar, and one which always attracts some of the biggest names in the fleet.

This year’s event is no different, with 66 boats entered, including a number of world and Olympic medallists, so competition will no doubt be fierce.

For Team Percy-Simpson, however, reaching the podium at this event is not high on our list of priorities – of course it’s always nice to leave a regatta with some silverware to show for your efforts, but we’re racing our brand new boat our here which literally arrived just a few days ago, so we’ve got plenty on our hands making sure she’s fully primed for racing.

Unlike some of the other less technical Olympic boats, there’s a hell of a lot of testing and tuning that comes with owning a new Star, so we’ll be putting her through her paces out on the race course at this regatta, making some adjustments as we go through the week so that we’re hopefully in a position to make speed improvements and winning some races as the week goes on.

Right now our heads are far too much inside the boat while we get used to all its little nuances, instead of outside of the boat where it needs to be to make all the tactical racing decisions, but ultimately we hope she’s going to be a weapon on the racecourse!

Results-wise, we had a bit of an up and down first day, with a 13 and a 5 on the scoreboard.  There are two races scheduled each day until to Friday, with the top ten boats then going through to the final medal race on Saturday (2 February).

All the best,

Iain Percy / Andrew Simpson