Fernando Echavarri - The 2008 Olympic Campaign

The 2008 Olympic Campaign

With renewed energies, Fernando and Antón started their Beijing 2008 summer Olympics campaign winning the Tornado Spain nationals, Europeans (in Sweden), 2005 Tornado World Championship (in France), plus most of the Eurolympic circuit races. As a result, they were awarded with the Rolex-ISAF World Sailor of the Year in 2005. Although the year 2006 showed inconsistent results due to Fernando racing some legs in the Volvo Ocean Race, the Tornado season was quite satisfactory with wins in the South America championship and 7th in the World's. Both races held in consecutive weeks in Buenos Aires Argentina. The season 2007 peaked in the ISAF-worlds in Cascais Portugal were Fernando and Antón become winners of this event for a second time. Importantly, they saved their passport to Beijing 2008. The sailing conditions in China were expected to be of marginal quality with strong currents and light shifty winds, however the championship end up being quite mixed with light winds and some strong conditions in the final races. Fernando Echavarri and Antón Paz won the gold medal in the Tornado Class. Out of the 11 races held Fernando and Anton won four races with a final score of 44 points. Getting the silver medal were Darren Bundock and Glenn Ashby of Australia with 49 points, and getting the bronze was Santiago Lange and Carlos Espinola of Argentina with 56 points.