Pepper and Giles win Bacardi Cup

by Annabel Jeaffreson on 10 Mar 2007

Today in the exceptionally tricky conditions of Biscayne Bay Miami, Hamish Pepper and David Giles continue to out class the rest of the Star fleet winning the Bacardi Cup.

'We’re absolutely rapt to win as the Bacardi Cup is regarded as one of the great Star regattas of the circuit.'

'It was a tough race; we had a good first beat and were second to the top mark ahead of Freddy and Mateusz. So we were in a good position as these were the two guys we needed to keep in check to win the regatta.'

'As the race went on the wind got very light and shifty, so it could have gone either way. We kept our lead down to the bottom mark but with a change of wind direction Freddy caught up and passed us. We were still in second and for him to win the regatta he needed to put eight boats between us. So we were still in a comfortable position.'

'On the last run it got even lighter and the boats behind us caught up with some passing making the last beat to the finish very tense. We ended up finishing seventh with Freddy finishing third. Mateusz was very deep in the pack so was never an issue.' says Hamish Pepper

Pepper finished with 15 points, Freddy Loof from Sweden finished in second with 18 points. Third place went to Mateusz Kusznierewicz of Poland with 23 points

From here Pepper heads back to the cold weather of Lake Garda, Italy to compete in the Expert Olympic classes regatta.


Bacardi Cup 2007 Final results

1st - Hamish Pepper NZL [2,3,1{16},2,7] – 15 points
2nd - Freddy Loof SWE [8,2,2,{18},3,3] – 18 points
3rd - Mateusz Kusznierewicz POL [4,9,7,2,1,{11}] – 23 points
4th - Ian Murray AUS [6,5,6,8,{OCS},4] – 29 points
5th - Marc Pickel GER [10,{48},8,10,6, 2] – 36 points