Kiwi 49ers strike gold at European Champs
- Dave Worsley
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Rising Kiwi 49er team Seb Menzies and George Lee Rush struck gold at the European Championships in Greece.
It was their proudest sailing achievement to date and the first major success for New Zealand in the class since a silver medal at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
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Menzies and Lee Rush secured overall victory in a strong men's skiff fleet with a day - and the medal race - to spare, having taken the lead on the second day of competition in Thessaloniki.
They delivered a calm and consistent performance across the week, notching 11 top-10 finishes from 12 fleet races, before also placing fourth in the double-points medal race to win the regatta by a commanding 54 points.
American crew Nevin Snow and Ian MacDiarmid were second, with Uruguay’s Hernán Umpierre and Fernando Diz third.
New Kiwi pairing Sam Bacon and Blake McGlashan narrowly missed out on the medal race with a 13th-place overall finish - their best result since teaming up last year.
Another emerging duo, Mattias Coutts and Oscar Gunn, placed second in the silver fleet (27th overall), while Francesco Kayrouz and Hamish McLaren finished 49th.
They've been steadily climbing the ranks over the past year. They finished fourth at last year's junior world championships, just days before Isaac McHardie and Will McKenzie took 49er silver at the Paris Games.
In the Olympic medallists' absence, Menzies and Lee Rush won the 2025 Oceanbridge Sail Auckland in February, placed ninth at the Princess Sofia Trophy in Palma in April, and came 13th at French Olympic Week in Hyères a fortnight later.
Their progress owes a lot to the depth and quality of the New Zealand 49er squad, which includes Bacon and McGlashan, Coutts and Gunn, and Kayrouz and McLaren.
The pair have their sights set on the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics, but know there's a long road ahead.
