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| 17 Jul 2019 | |
| Sports |
| Sailing |
| Dominic Lewis (MH 2012-17) has won the BUCS Team Racing Championship sailing for Exeter Blue, racing against the top university sailors in the country. The BUCS team racing nationals is the leading university sailing event of the year, and is the culmination of an academic year’s selection, training and competition. In February, the largest team racing event, was simultaneously held over five venues across the UK. 540 sailors, in over some 90 university teams, competed in Qualifiers. From these five events, 21 teams qualified direct to the Finals. A further fifteen teams went forward to Playoffs, to find a further seven teams to go forward to the Finals. Dominic’s team, Exeter Blue, were narrow favourites on the day of the Championship, but faced strong competition against Cambridge and Southampton’s rival teams. “We finished the first day in 6th place, however an unbeaten day on the second day meant that we opened up a gap between ourselves and the rest of the fleet,” Dominic explains. “One loss in qualifying on the final day put us through to the knockout stage in first place. We eased through the quarter finals and then beat Oxford to reach Cambridge in the finals, who we beat 3-1 through some close racing to claim BUCS gold.” Dominic’s interest in the sailing began at Tonbridge. “I arrived at Exeter at the start of last year and, having gained substantial experience team racing through Tonbridge sailing, the captain took the risk of putting me straight into the Exeter firsts,” he explains. “We pushed hard throughout the year, training on 3 days a week, putting time in at the gym and in strategy meetings, and using events over the course of the year to match ourselves up with other university and post-uni teams. Without the help of Jonathan Moss, Bill Burnett and Tonbridge Sailing, I would not have found myself fortunate enough to be in such a position after my first year.” |
