Pair take gold at world champs
As unbeaten streak continues Burling and Tuke are establishing themselves as favourites for 2016 Olympics
Kiwi sailors Peter Burling and Blair Tuke continued their stretch of supremacy in the 49er class, winning a second straight world championship over the weekend.
The pair took gold with a day to spare in Santander, Spain, heading into the medal race with an unassailable 36-point lead after a fifth-place finish on the penultimate day.
The victory prolongs an impressive unbeaten run in the class, a streak that began after claiming silver at the 2012 London Olympics. Since that result, Burling and Tuke have won eight major regattas including two world titles.
The first of those, in Marseille last year, was something of a breakthrough effort for the Kiwi crew, after both the 2011 and 2012 world championships produced second-place efforts behind Australian pair Nathan Outteridge and Iain Jensen.
This year it was the Australians left fighting with the Danish crew for silver, having been unable to make a dent in the young Kiwis’ dominance.
Burling, 23, and Tuke, 25, are establishing themselves as gold medal favourites for the 2016 Olympics, although Rio is hardly their only priority.
Both men were signed by Team New Zealand in January and Burling, who was the youngest 49er sailor at the London Games, has long been tipped to succeed Dean Barker at the helm of the black boat.
Burling shared the skipper duties with Barker at May’s Extreme Sailing Series in China but, as their results this year in the 49er have shown, Burling and Tuke are clearly unaffected by the dual roles.
Unfortunately for the Kiwi team, the pair’s world title will be the solitary gold New Zealand take from the regatta after Jo Aleh and Polly Powrie fell short in their bid to defend their 470 title.
Heading into the medal race in second, the Olympic gold medallists needed to finish higher than firstplaced Austrians Lara Vadlau and Jolanta Ogar if they wished to clinch another title, but they slumped to sixth. “It was a tough day for us,” a disappointed Aleh said. “We had a chance at the start of the race but didn’t capitalise on it.”
The silver was a rare result for a pair who have already won gold at three world cup regattas and at last month’s Olympic test event in Rio.
Elsewhere, fellow Kiwis Alex Maloney and Molly Meech slipped to 12th in the 49er FX class, an event they won in Marseille last year.