Evans and Burling - final Olympic Report

by Carl Evans and Peter Burling on 31 Aug 2008 Carl Evans and Peter Burling, the youngest crew to ever compete at a sailing Olympics reflect on the 2008 Olympics:

We’re back home from the Beijing and straight back to school. 15 weeks overseas is a lot to catch up on.

What an amazing time at the Olympics. So much to experience, learn, and see and fun to be had.

As you are probably aware we finished 11th overall of the 29 countries in the men’s 470 class, missing the medal race by just 2 points. An unbelievably close regatta with some crews putting up to 16 years solid sailing on the line, for the 3 medals. All our 10 races were in less than 9 knots, even though the race officer recorded a top gust of 11 knots on day one. The algae was not an issue with up to 1300 fishing boats available each morning to clear up any algae that had escaped past the 20km protection net. We even had a few days of blue sky where we could see to the horizon.

Our black flag disqualification for starting too early in race 5 was a setback. The racing highlight was winning race 9 on the last day being tempered a little by the realization that we had just missed the medal race.

We were able to fit the Opening Ceremony in before racing started – an hour’s flight from Qingdao to Beijing. We thought it was really amazing and didn’t realise we had seen so little of it until we got home and saw TV1’s highlights package.

In Qingdao our accommodation was perfect - on site (to be turned in to a 5 star hotel after the games) with the food hall on level 2 and the boat park only a few minutes’ walk away. The kiwis even had a whole floor to themselves. Much more posh than the Beijing Olympic village.

Watching Tom’s gold medal race was a real highlight and a euphoric experience for all, lifting him and his board up the ramp in celebration. Once we were finished and had everything packed into the container it was back to Beijing for 5 days to support the other NZ athletes, see some other sports and do the tourist thing.

We had the opportunity to get inside the Birds Nest stadium to see the men’s 4x100 metre relay (WR for Jamaica) and pole-vault. Saw some high diving at the Water Cube. Ben Fouhy and Steven Ferguson racing their kayaks. Men’s hockey final. The highlight probably being the American men’s Basketball team playing for gold against Spain, we managed to sneak into the athletes stand with the NZ girls Basketball players – David Beckham was just in front watching too.

The Great wall, Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square were all pretty cool.

We would like to say an extra special thank you to Nathan Handley our coach for helping us out with everything we needed. You were awesome.

To our sponsors and supporters – our Olympic campaign would not have been possible without you. Dave Mackay making a special trip to Qingdao, Fernando at Quantum for the extra sails, Musto, YNZ/SPARC/NZ Yachting Trust for funding huge portions of our costs, and all the others that have supported us over the last year.

A huge thank you to you all.

Peter and Carl.