The 51 year old US Race Officer has made a 9,000 mile trek, each year for the last five years, to come to Australia’s Lake Macquarie for the Heaven Can Wait 24 hour race.
We caught up with Middleton in the final hours of the 2010 24 hour race and asked him about the changes in the race.
Here is some background on Blake's sailing
‘Sailing wise I grew up sailing in the Midwest, mostly scows – boats like M-scows and E-scows, (28 foot, flat bottom boat with dual rudders and dual side boards) which are still my favourite boat – and race Lasers and 470s and a variety of other boats as well – and eventually got into teaching, which led to coaching – and I coached at a National level in the US as an assistant coach at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland for a season; and then I spent nine years as the head coach and director of sailing at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
‘Now I do mostly race management, so I run races full time for two yacht clubs, the Minnetonka Yacht Club and the Wayzata Yacht Club in Minnesota now, near Minneapolis.
‘During the sailing season – May through to October – I’m out there on the lake for as much as six days a week, literally running races. Across the seasons I have been PRO for a range of North American Championships from Etchells, to J24's E-Scows etc. so its a busy season, but every year I look forward to my trip 'down under'
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