Pepper snatches silver in Stars at Rolex Miami OCR

by Annabel Jeaffreson on 28 Jan 2007

Hamish Pepper and David Giles have won the Medal race at the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta and taken second overall in the highly competitive Star Class.

Hamish Pepper said, 'It was a great finish to the regatta, winning the medal race and being able to put the opposition back where we needed them. Mathematically it was possible to finish second overall and the opportunity arose where I could force the number two-placed boat to infringe. In turn he had to do a penalty putting him to the back of the fleet.'

'We had a perfect start and first beat, so got a good jump on the fleet. We had clear air and just sailed a conservative race after the first lap'

'The new Olympic classes format, with the medal race puts a huge influence on the final race, so there can be huge gains and loses. Luckily today we got it right and came out on top.'

Freddie Loof from Sweden retained his lead winning the regatta. In third place was Ross Macdonald from Canada.

From here Hamish goes to a Mumm 30 regatta, then heads home to New Zealand as one of the nominees for the Halberg Awards. Next Star regatta is the Barcardi Cup, Miami in early March.

Olympic Classes Regatta 2007
Final results

1 - Loof, Fredrik Ekstrom, Anders SWE (3, 2, 2, 1, 2, 4, [17], 2, 16) – 32 points
2 - Pepper, Hamish Giles, Dave NZL (4, 1, [27], 2, 13, 14, 11, 3, 2) – 50 points
3 - Domingos, Afonso santos, Bernardo POR (1, 11, 1, [17], 2, 1, 7, 9, 20) – 52 points
4 - Macdonald, Ross Wolfs, Mike CAN (4, 4, [19], 7, 4, 5, 4, 16, 8) – 52 points
5 - Rohart, Xavier Rambeau, Pascal FRA (11, 1, 7, 3, 1, 10, 12, [18], 10) – 55 points
6 - Stanjek, Robert Kleen, Frithjof GER (2, 8, 2, 8, 7, 15, [26], 7, 6) – 55 points
7 - Kusznierewicz, Mateusz Zycki, Dominik POL (8, 7, 10, 19, [24], 9, 1, 1, 4) – 59 points
8 - Szabo, George Scott, Andrew USA (7, 5, [26], 11, 3, 16, 2, 4, 18) – 66 points
9 - Andersen, Benny Just, Mogens DEN (9, 6, 4, [24], 5, 2, 16, 11, 14) – 67 points
10 - Dane, John Sperry, Austin USA (1, 3, 21, 8, 3, 3, 22, [25], 12) – 73 points