Tornado nipper winners

At SPA Mark Bulkeley and Leigh McMillan became the first British team to win a Tornado grade one event in two decades. James Boyd reports

Team GBR Tornado sailors Leigh McMillan and Mark Bulkeley scored their second great coup at SPA Regatta in Medemblik last week when they became the first British Tornado team to win a Grade One event since Rob White's era in the 1980s. At present they have the edge over team GBR's favoured Olympic pairing of Hugh Styles and Adam May having won the British Tornado slot for the Athens pre-Olympic regatta in August - their first coup of the year.

"We’ve slowly progressed," Mark Bulkeley told The Daily Sail. "We’ve been sailing together for two years. We feel we’ve slowly been making progress the whole way. Last year we had an on-off season, but were really with Hugh and Adam most of the way. We beat them at the Worlds and at a few of the top events. So going into this season we certainly felt we were level pegging. This season we have had some good events and we are really happy with the way we are sailing and the way things are. So at the moment it is starting to go our way a bit."

Getting the pre-Olympic spot was the first occasion they have edged ahead of Styles and May. "Palma and Hyeres were our two selection events for that. Hugh had a slight advantage going into Hyeres after Palma. Then we sailed a pretty good event at Hyeres. Our end result of eighth didn’t reflect how we sailed that week. On the last day we had to finish the job off with Hugh, so we made sure we stuck with him rather than go up the fleet to try and get a good result overall. But again that was one of our goals for this season was the pre-Olympic spot. And we did that at Hyeres."

With the pre-Olympic place in the bag, McMillan and Bulkeley were able to relax a little at SPA. "We had this event before the Europeans to try a few new things and try and sail without agendas about having to qualify for this or that. So it has been a nice event in that respect and it has worked out quite well," continues Bulkeley.

Among the new kit they were trying was a mast without a taper in it - presumably this gives greater stiffness to the topmast - and a new mainsail from Ullman in Italy. They tested it before SPA started, liked it and then opted to use it in the regatta. "We think it gives us more power in the marginal conditions, but it is power we think we can handle up the range as we showed this week when the breeze kicked in," says Bulkeley.

Another key to their success recently has been hooking up with the grand master of the Tornado, Olympic veteran Mitch Booth, to do some training, tuning and sail testing. Booth may possibly be regretting his decision when at SPA the British youngsters knocked him into second place.

"We had decent breeze for the first three days," recounted Bulkeley of how they progressed through SPA. "We had an average start [a 15th place in the first race], but we kept ourselves safe. Then we got a win on the last race of the first day which set us up for the rest of the week. Then on the second day we had a 2-2-1, which put us into the lead. Really we then just kept going. We had good boat speed which helped, and just sailed smart and went the right way and kept ourselves out of trouble.

"On the last day we had to go out with just the one race knowing that Mitch had to finish in the top two for us to lose. So we went out there with a game plan, to either stop him get that or make sure we were with him the whole way round the track so if he had a good race we would be right with him. If we finished in the top five then it didn’t matter. In the end we beat him by a couple of places on the water. So we were very happy with it."

Of note about McMillan and Bulkeley is their age. The Tornado is possibly second only to the Star in Olympic sailing for the wide range of age groups that compete. Helmsman, McMillan, 22, has been sailing Tornados for four years following a progression up from Ollies and into Laser Radials, while Bulkeley is two years older and has a background sailing F18 and Hurricane cats plus some team racing at university.

"In the Tornado class there’s a lot of people up there who’ve been sailing in the class almost as long as I’ve been alive!" says Bulkeley.

At present the duo are on seed funding, but if they are one of the top three European boats at the Tornado Europeans in Cagliari, Sardinia (starting on 6 June) then they have the opportunity to get B funding. "We do alright at the moment," says Bulkeley. "We have got one or two sponsors who we are negotiating with to get some more money. But it’s getting to the point now where there are quite a lot of projects that we need to start really getting going ready for Cadiz, because that is the big focus for this year." So, yes, they too need more money.

At present they have two boats, one in the UK that is going to Athens and their SPA boat which is off to Sardinia.

Once again they will be training with Booth for the week preceeding the Europeans. Then the action-packed summer continues with a team GBR training camp in the first two weeks of August, the Saronic Gulf Regatta, the pre-Olympics in Athens and then it is full steam ahead for the Worlds in Cadiz.

"Cadiz itself could be a selection for us," says Bulkeley of what may be their third grand coup of the year. "The way we understand it at the moment - the top three at Cadiz, they have the right to send a person, not necessarily that they will. So that is the goal at the moment."

To read more about McMillan and Bulkeley see their website here. We will of course be following their progress with interest on The Daily Sail.