| Etchells Mid-Winters heating up |
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Peter Hollis will be no wild card entry when Australia’s leading Etchells class tactician’s line up to contest the 2005 Australian Mid-winter championship off Mooloolaba over the Queens Birthday weekend. Sure Hollis has never raced in this strict international one-design class before, but he has the credentials to rank beyond being an outsider. There are no promises that he will be a title ‘bolter’, but it will become a sure bet that he will shake a few top skippers along the way when he learns how to master the fine line between success and failure in this class. Racing in this class is so competitive that not even Dennis Conner or John Bertrand can predict where they will finish in the fleet; and naturally, Peter Hollis regarded by some as the ‘new boy on the block’, is in the same boat. However his Etchells class sailing rivals should be warned that this is one skipper that will not go away until he is satisfied by achieving success. Not many of his rivals have even taken interest in who he is, or what he has achieved, in a career which first started from sailing in the cat-rigged Nip Thorpe Trainee on the Brisbane River. The Nip Thorpe Trainee became the important role maker in the careers of a number of Australia’s best sailors, including 1972 Olympic Dragon Class Gold Medalist, John Cuneo and dual Finn class Olympian, Ron Jenyns. Hollis too, was a star performer in the Trainees, where he showed the talent that was later proved in international competition. He accepted the personal challenge to race in the International Contender class designed by his boy-hood idol, Bob Miller (Ben Lexcen), who later changed the history of the Americas Cup. Hollis, naturally, like all young Brisbane River sailors at the time, was a Miller fan, but he claimed his own deserved place on the stage of international sailing, first winning the 1973 Australian Contender title with Bon Vivant, before beating the best in the World to win the 1973 and 1974 World Championships in Europe. Those outstanding results made the Queensland, Australian and world Contender champion, the unanimous choice for the 1973-74 Ampol Yachtsman of the year award. He has also won an Australian Olympic Star class championship steering Oxometry to victory in the 1978-79 national series. As expected, Hollis has created a lot of interest in the class and his clash with the nominated pace setters, 2004 world champion Peter McNeill (Mojo), and the recently crowned Queensland champion Mike O’Brien (Racer X), will be a feature in what is
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