Ben Saxton wins Y&Y Racing Performance of the year 15 Jan 2016
The calibre of the sailors attending RCYC's annual Endeavour Trophy was underlined yesterday when Ben Saxton, the helm of the winning boat of the 2015 event, was awarded the Y&Y Racing Performance of the year – the award recognising his storming victory over six times Endeavour Winner (and previous Winner of Yachtsman of the Year in 2012, Nick Craig) at the most recent event where, along with crew Toby Lewis, he took an unprecedented eight out of eight bullets.
Ben nudged another well known sailor called Ben into second place, but as Ben Ainslie hasn't actually WON the America's cup yet (for GB anyway*), but merely the first round race held at Portsmouth that's fair enough. Land Rover BAR (the GB entry) currently lie in third place overall after three qualifying events, behind Oracle Team USA and Emirates Team New Zealand.
Ben and Nicola (pictured above) are currently fighting for selection for the Olympics for Team GB. Only one team can go per country for each class of boat, and their recent form (Bronze medal winners at their most recent outing in Brazil) was a great show of strength. However, their overall goal is Olympic Gold, not just selection to represent GBR – in the very simplest of terms they just need to make sure the French and Australian teams that beat them in Rio in December 2015 don't beat them again in August 2016…
*Only joking – here's to the British entry finally winning the America's Cup in 2017!