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Sail-World.com : Olympic moment at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week

Olympic moment at Audi Hamilton Island Race Week

Australia's Olympic sailing team returned yesterday to their sailing headquarters on Hamilton Island to a heroes welcome. The team arrived in time for Audi Hamilton Island Race Week silver jubilee celebrations.

Hamilton Island was the team's training headquarters in the lead up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

A tickertape parade will be held on Hamilton Island tonight at 1830 and the team will be flying out tomorrow.

Team Manager Michael Jones said the Olympic crew was probably the best prepared Olympic Sailing team Australia had ever produced.

The 470 Men's team of Malcolm Page and Nathan Wilmot, and the 470 Women's team of Tessa Parkinson and Elise Rechichi, brought home the gold for Australia. The Tornado pairing of Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby brought back the silver.

'It was a fantastic performance by the whole team which turned out to be the best performance by an Australian team ever off-shore,' said Jones.

'What we mean by that is they won four medals at the Sydney (Olympics) at home but as an off-shore Olympics it was by far our best result.'

Jones said the conditions at the 2008 Olympic Games was not dissimilar to those at the teams training grounds on Hamilton Island.

'It was a really tough regatta and no one gives away gold medals easily,' he said.

The Australian sailing team came away from the 2008 Olympics as the second best nation for medal hauls with only the UK taking home more medals.

'In addition to the two gold and the silver we also had a number of fourth and fifth places at the regatta and we were very close to getting a large medal haul,' said Jones.

'We came away as the second best nation which was a fine achievement in itself and everybody worked really hard.'

Malcolm Page said the Olympics were pretty special knowing that a gold medal was almost guaranteed by the last race.

'Knowing that we only really had to start and finish made things easy and I think we actually relaxed and were able to sail out and do our best,' he said.

Elise Rechichi said while the rest of the team had been dieting before the Olympics both she and Tessa Parkinson had been secretly hiding in the closet eating ice creams.

She said they had wanted to maintain their lightweight advantage racing in China but didn't want to be so light that they would 'get blown away' in a big wind.

Darren Bundock commented that while bringing home a medal had been exhilarating, it was a real shame the Tornados had been pulled from the Olympics for 2012.

by Merilyn McKenzie 4:33 AM Thu 28 Aug 2008 GMT

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