Remarkable comeback win for Burling and Tuke

Peter Burling and Blair Tuke on their way to defend their European title. Photo / Joao Ferrand

Peter Burling and Blair Tuke conquered a come-back challenge on the final day of the 2015 49er European Championship Regatta to successfully defend their title and further extend their remarkable string of victories in the class.

A protest late on the penultimate day, surrounding a mark rounding incident, saw New Zealand's Burling and Tuke take a disqualification and relinquish the overall lead relegated to third place.

The Australian crew of Nathan Outteridge and Ian Jensen, who lodged the successful protest were leading and five points ahead of the kiwis, however the final day offered plenty of opportunity for redemption with three finals races and a medal race in the schedule.

Racing off the coast of Porto on the large Atlantic swells Burling and Tuke let their sailing speak for itself and started the day with a second place to set the tone. Next they won a race, and went on to deliver another second place in the third.

By then the time limit for a Medal Race had expired, but for Burling and Tuke it would have been a formality anyway, because they had won the fleet racing by 24 points.

Today's victory marks an unbroken run of 18 regatta wins for Burling and Tuke who have been invincible since taking the Olympic silver medal at London 2012 behind arch-rivals Outteridge and Jensen.

"We're just so stoked to have come back and won the way we did today," said Tuke, dripping wet in the live broadcast TV studio after coming off the water.

"We didn't feel affected by the disqualification last night. If anything, maybe Nathan and Goobs [Outteridge and Jensen] would have rather been 7 points behind at the beginning of the day, so they could have gone in with the same attitude as we did. We came out firing and it was nice to get the job done with three nice races."

Key today was to secure the favoured right hand side of the course.

Tuke explains; "It was difficult, you had to be able to hold your lane on port and be in the right spot on the start and we did it in the first race and that gave us a good gauge on how to do it on the second two races."

"The boat was going fast all day, we sailed it smart and we had an eagerness to win."
Germany's Justus Schmidt and Max Boehme got up to take the silver medal, John Pink and Stuart Bithell (GBR) took the bronze managing to push Nathan Outteridge and Ian Jensen (AUS) out of the podium placings into 4th.

Burling and Tuke now go to Portsmouth for the America's Cup World Series with Emirates Team New Zealand. Following that they re-join the NZL Sailing Team contingent selected to compete at the 2015 Rio Test Event in August.