2004 Review - part three

The big one: summer action and the Olympic Games

Two weeks in August were to dominate the third quarter of 2004, but before we have a look at the Athens Olympic Games there was the small matter of getting through July. If you can’t wait, we were given a sneak preview of some of the British Olympic sailors ‘In the buff’ – all for charity.

Two very different offshore races (with two very different winners) came to their conclusion at the start of the month. The little Ker 32 Calyx Voice & Data won the Round Ireland race while Mari Cha IV won the rather more comfortable West Marine Pacific Cup race to Hawaii.



It was all go in the Baltic during the first couple of weeks. The Nokia Oops Cup took place off Stockholm providing excitement all round (above). Knut Frostad’s Academy then went on to win the Gotlund Runt in record breaking time. The Volvo Baltic Race, which included the Gotlund Runt, had a nail biting finish a couple of days later with Thomas Blixt and Sony Ericsson taking victory on the final windward-leeward race in Sandhamn after 1200 miles of racing. Meanwhile on the opposite side of Sweden, in Marstrand, Russell Coutts won the Swedish Match Cup, helming for Jes Gram-Hansen's team. There we caught up with overall Tour winner Peter Gilmour and the man behind the series Peirre Tinnerholm.

Back in the UK there was the alarming news that a boat-load of accountants had sunk!

The 49ers were the final class to have a Championship before the Games and it was near disaster for the Spanish medal favourites as they pulled out after sustaining an injury. Britain’s Draper and Hiscocks took victory.

The Volvo ISAF Youth Worlds (below) brought our focus back to the Baltic yet again, but this time to Poland ( photos). France ended up as top country, with Britain in second place and Australia third. Taking place a little further down the coast, Anne Hinton gave us an in depth look at one of Germany’s biggest sailing regattas – Warnemuende Week.



July was the time for the biennial gathering of boats at Crosshaven for the Failte Ireland Cork Week. The big boys were in town and cruising for a bruising. The two Max Z86s Pyewacket and Morning Glory had a dust up, with the latter’s owner Hasso Plattner packing up and going home early. We had some video of the action and some photos too. We also managed to catch up with one of Ireland’s most prominent race boat owners Colm Barrington and looked around his new Ker designed Flying Glove. Peter Harrison was to come away with the big prize in IRM and Pyewacket the IRC win.

The International 14s had their UK Nationals in Largs in Scotland. They were to be troubled with light winds causing the Prince of Wales Trophy Race to be cancelled twice. Andy Rice found out what was the latest gossip in the class. At the B14 Worlds on Lake Garda, Tim Fells and Shaun Barber took top spot.



SailRocket, piloted by Paul Larsen completed her first tentative runs across Portland Harbour on the 20th July. We took the first video of this remarkable craft breaking the 20 knot barrier for the first time.

Throughout July the Tour Voile had been circumnavigating France. The start had been delayed because of heavy weather and at the conclusion of the Atlantic part of the race the American team on Groovederci was in the lead. We spoke to owner Deneen Demourkas about being in the yellow jersey. They were to slide to third overall after the final race with Bouygues Telecom pipping them at the post.

Competing for the second time in the Solitaire du Figaro singlehanded offshore race in one designs we spoke to Skandia's Sam Davies about her goal of ‘Top 10 or bust.’ There were some photos of the fleet as the made their way through the Solent on leg two.

The Rolex Commodores' Cup got under way at the start of August. One of the four British teams was to win the event. We had some photos and some video too. While in Cowes we also got the latest on ‘The Boat of the Season’, Full Pelt.



The 420 Europeans were held in Croatia with the local hotshots taking the Men's title. The girl's competition saw a Brit one-two. The Italian squad also took home two medals. On the other side of the globe the Etchells Worlds were taking place. In a fleet littered with many famous names it was Australian skipper Peter McNeill who was to win.

Back to the Baltic again, but this time on two smaller hulls in the Archipelago Raid ( photos). Will Sunnocks and Mark Self won the race flying the flag for Britain, while David Scully told us what it was like sailing and paddling around the Swedish islands. Sweden was also to host the Melges 24 World Championships (photos 1 and 2), the 15 year old defending champion Shark Kahn was to finish in sixth with victory going to the French team on P and P helmed by Sebastien Col.

Skandia Cowes Week was a week later than usual this year and provided it’s usual great mix of racing. There were two photo galleries, including ‘Lumpy Friday.’

Just before we get involved with the Olympics, over in San Francisco where Morgan Larson and Trevor Baylis won the 505 World Championships.

And so to the big event and Athens was the centre of attention in late August for the Olympics. Generally classes competing during in the first week experienced better conditions than those such as the Star and the Tornado racing in the second. Once again Team GBR excelled with Shirley Robertson's Yngling team taking Gold with a race to spare in the women's keel boat (see our interview with her) and Ben Ainslie performing an equally spectacular feat in the Finn, climbing back after being disqualified from the second race on the first day over a port-starboard incident (see Andrew Preece's report).



In the Europes, Lasers and 470 Women class the Olympics held little surprise. The Norwegian demon Siren Sundby won Gold in the Women's singlehanders while the Brazilian technician Robert Scheidt won his third Laser Olympic medal and second Gold (see the report on these wins here and the photos). Greek 470 sailors Bekatorou and Tsoulfa scored an emphatic victory finishing on 38 points to the 62 of the Spanish team.



The results were less predictable in the Men's 470 where the US Olympic veterans Burnham and Foerster narrowly beat Team GBR's Rogers and Glanville into the silver position by three points, a nonetheless welcome result for the Brits following their fourth place in Sydney. The finish was particularly close in the Mistral class where in the men's division Britain's Nick Dempsey picked up bronze behin Israel's Gal Fridman and local sailboarder Nikolaos Kaklamanakis and French sailor Faustine Merret won Gold in the Women's from China's Yin Jian.

The result were more disappointing for Team GBR in week two when Chris Draper and Simon Hiscocks picked up bronze in the 49er (Hiscocks won silver in Sydney and was hoping for Gold this time) behind the potent Spanish duo Martinez and Fernandez and Ukrainians Luka and Leonchuk. In the Star Iain Percy and Steve Mitchell failed to medal, finishing sixth, leaving another Brazilian sailor Torben Grael to pick up his fifth Olympic sailing medal and second Gold with his crew Marcelo Ferreira ahead of Canada's Ross MacDonald and France's Xavier Rohart. An equally flukey series for the Tornado saw Austrian legends Roman Hagara and Hans Peter Steinacher clear leaders ahead of American duo John Lovell and Charlie Ogletree and Argentinians Santiago Lange and Carlos Espinola with favourites Bundock/Forbes sixth and Britain's McMillan and Bulkeley 13th. See the report from the Tornado/Star conclusion.

There was huge amount published on the site during the Games, from sailor profiles, class profiles, interviews, gossip, expert testimony and photos that the best thing to do is to have a look back in the Olympics section on the site. Click here to see the reports from the start of the Games.

For the sailors coming back from Athens, getting your boat out was easy compared with how Mari Cha IV decided to travel from the USA to the Med.

Bruno Peyron and the big Orange II catamaran weren’t interested in going deck cargo and instead lined up for an attempt at the Transatlantic record. She was to be the first boat to achieve over 700 miles in a day, but was ultimately to fall short of the record by a matter of hours.

During August TheDailySail got to go for a sail on a couple of nice yachts. First up was a day out with GBR70 and second James Boyd got the cream when he raced on board Franck Cammas’ new Groupama 2 ( video) at the Fecamps ORMA 60 Grand Prix. Russell Coutts was next to be invited on board a couple of weeks later…

There were also a couple of other interesting tales of the sea. New mini sailor Phil Sharp recounted rolling his boat in a gale off Milford Haven and the Swedish speed sailors brought us up to date with their goal of 50 knots.

The first Act of the America’s Cup in Marseille kicked off September. There were some excellent shots of the fleet racing. We also caught up with Emirates Team New Zealand principle Grant Dalton. But what everyone will remember Act 1 for will be the images of the AC boats blown off their cradles following an overnight storm the night after the regatta had finished.



Thedailysail were out in force at the Rolex Farr 40 Worlds, held this year against the backdrop of the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco. Jim Richardson and his Barking Mad crew won their coveted second title. We spoke to the man behind the Farr 40 magic, Geoff Stagg. The Mumm 30 Worlds in Canada were won by Australian Richard Perini.

September also saw some more big dinghy championships completed. Irish and Gotrel won the RS800 Nationals, the McGovern brothers took the inaugural Irish 49er Championship while Richard Stenhouse dominated the Musto Skiff Gold Cup. The 29er Eurocup went to a young British pair and on a slightly larger scale the H Boat Worlds in Denmark was won by one of the home teams. The first running of the Crewsaver Top Club also proved a great success ( photos).

Newport, Rhode Island was to be the scene of the long awaited and rare C Class Catamaran Championship. This was not to be taken lightly on TheDailySail. Invictus Challenge had only bought their boat out of the shed the previous month and it was a case of ‘Once in a blue moon’ when the four competitors met up Stateside. As soon as they were afloat we had the video camera out. For the Brits it was a case of ‘Chasing out the weak links’. Ultimately race organiser Steve Clark defended his title, but found time to us a unique video guide to operation of Cogito’s solid wing rig.

Meanwhile the big heavy boats were doing battle in the Med and US. The Swans were in Sardinia for their championship and the big boats were in action in San Francisco, where Aera won the first US IRC championship. The new breed Transpac 52s were looking good on camera.

September drew to a close with the news that the bank HSBC was to sponsor Tracy Edwards’ Oryx Cup. A couple of days later GBR Challenge put out a release to say that, despite the rumours over the summer, HSBC were not to be sponsoring them.