Peter Burling (Tauranga) and Blair Tuke won the the 2013 SAP 49er European Championships in Arhus, Denmark yesterday.
Alex Maloney and Molly Meech (Tauranga) also secured a podium finish, taking bronze in the 49erFX European Championship, with a further two top nine results for New Zealand including fifth for Natalia Kosinska at the RS:X European Championships and ninth for Marcus Hansen and Josh Porebski in the 49er fleet.
The final day of racing in Denmark featured three short, fast medal races on a tightly defined race track watched by a crowd of spectators both ashore and on the water, but it was not all smooth sailing today for the Olympic silver medallists with skipper Burling actually falling from the boat in the opening medal race and crossing the line last.
Turning things around, they responded with a win in the next race, followed by a fifth in the final of three and secured the overall victory by four points.
"We had a pretty bad race in that first one. I actually fell out the back of the boat. We were just trying to bounce back from that and had a really good one the second one and managed to just do what we had to in the last one," said Burling.
While the pair are no strangers to the podium, Tuke said this victory is a milestone, with the Kiwis enjoying the top step and the gold medal this time despite a strong performance from British sailors Dylan Fletcher and Alain Sign who claimed silver.
"It's great," said Tuke when asked how it feels to win. "Obviously we won silver at the Olympics last year but it's the first time we've actually won a major international regatta like this with all the top guys here, so it's really pleasing for us and especially being the first regatta back for us since the Olympics. We came here to just get back in the boat but we've been sailing really well this week so we're pretty happy."
Burling says they will take lots away from this regatta.
"It's positive for ourselves to know that you can make a stuff up like that and bounce back 10 minutes later. They're turning the races around so quickly out there, so to fix the boat, jump back in and make the right decisions is pretty promising long term."
In the 49erFX class, which debuts as an Olympic class at Rio 2016, young Kiwis Maloney and Meech went into the final day lying third and secured the bronze medal with no change to the order of the top three.
Maloney and Meech were second, first and then seventh on the water, racing against eight other crews in the three medal races. Dominant throughout, Danish sailors Ida Marie Baad Nielsen and Marie Thusgaard Olsen won at home.
"Consistency throughout the regatta helped us get on the podium," said Meech. "Today was quite tricky out there, we sailed quite well in the first two races and then the last race we had a little incident at the start and got a bit held up, and we might not have made the right choices after that."
With a full strength fleet including all the current 49erFX campaigners this result is another exciting indicator of the potential t this young Kiwi pair has, but they know it's a long road to Rio. Their next focus will be for the 2013 49erFX World Championships.