PERFECT START FOR BURLING AND TUKE IN RIO

The Rio 2016 Olympic Sailing Competition features 380 athletes from 66 nations, in 274 boats racing across ten Olympic disciplines. Racing runs from Monday 8 August through to Thursday 18 August 2016 with 217 male and 163 female sailors racing out of Marina da Gloria in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Sailing made its Olympic debut in 1900 and has been a mainstay at every Olympic Games since 1908. For more information or requests please contact Daniel Smith at World Sailing on marketing@sailing.org or phone
© ©Sailing Energy / World Sailing

Peter Burling and Blair Tuke have returned a perfect scorecard on day one of Rio 2016 and take the early lead in the 49er event.

Peter Burling and Blair Tuke have opened their Rio 2016 Olympic campaign with two race wins to lead the 49er class after day one for the skiffs.

The New Zealand Olympic Team co-captains looked composed and confident pouncing on a late error from Denmark in race one to take the gun in the first race.

In race two they came through on the second downwind run choosing the faster track to the bottom mark and clearing out on the chasing pack for a convincing 40-second victory.

Two wins places them firmly at the top of the board on two points on a day when some other prominent sailors, including the Australians and the British, struggled.

Light winds today meant the fleet was kept ashore until after 2pm, but Blair Tuke said he didn’t mind the delay, “We’ve been watching all the other classes race now for a few days so we were really keen to get into it this morning, and we had to wait just a little bit longer but that was okay.”

“Finally, when the sou’wester came it was nice, it was shifty on the close-in course near the beach, but we managed to get a couple of low scores so we’re really happy with the day.”

Burling agreed, saying, “We’re really happy to get a couple of low scores on the board and not walk away with anything big and just to get into the series, you know, we’ve been waiting a long time to get racing, and we’ve been really enjoying ourselves out there and I think that showed today.”

Family and friends of the pair were on the beach. “It was good to have Pete’s parents there and my whole family – all dressed up and giving us yahoos and stuff it was really cool and we definitely enjoyed the extra bit of support from the kiwis on the beach.”

Behind Burling and Tuke on the leader board are Jorge Lima and Jose Costa of Portugal on eight points, while Erik Heil and Thomas Ploessel are just one further adrift. The 49er fleet continues racing tomorrow.

Jodie Bakewell-White | Yachting NZ

NZL Sailing Team current standings

1stPeter Burling and Blair Tuke (49er) (1, 1)
4thGemma Jones and Jason Saunders (Nacra 17) (9, 15, 7, 5, 4, 2)
6thAlex Maloney and Molly Meech (49erFX) (6, 5)
6thJo Aleh and Polly Powrie (Women’s 470) (21DSQ, 1, 4, 1, 12)
6thSam Meech (Laser) (19, 3, 5, 6, 14, 17, 13, 6)
13thPaul Snow-Hansen and Daniel Willcox (Men’s 470) (2, 10, 20, 15, 23)
15thJosh Junior (Finn) (18, 24UFD, 14, 14, 5, 3)