Portugal’s Afonso Domingos and Bernardo Santos Win Their Second Bacardi Cup Regatta
report by Janet Maizner

81st Running of One of the Most Prestigious Star Class Events in the World Is Decided by Tiebreaker Miami, FL – March 7, 2008 – Portugal’s Afonso Domingos and crew Bernardo Santos won the 2008 Bacardi Cup Star Class Regatta on the waters of Biscayne Bay Friday, edging 2002 Star Class World Champion Iain Percy and crew Andrew Simpson in a tiebreaker.

Aided by substantial gains on each of the reach legs in both races, Domingos and Santos sailed to two second place finishes Friday – and a first place tie with Percy and Simpson, who held the lead entering the final day of the regatta, but finished fifth and ninth in Friday’s two races. The teams’ finishes in the regatta’s final race were used to determine the overall winner of the 81st Bacardi Cup.

The 2004 and now 2008 Bacardi Cup champions, Domingos and Santos remain the only European sailors ever to win the Bacardi Cup in the regatta’s 81-year history.

“There was much more wind today than on other days, and we had some great gains on the reach legs,” said Domingos, who benefited from the triangle course. “We knew where [Percy] was, but we tried not to focus on him in the last legs. Our goal was to finish in front – to go fast – and not to cover anyone specifically.”

John Dane and crew Austin Sperry, the 2006 Bacardi Cup champions and the United States’ Star Class representatives in the 2008 Olympics in August, finished third and fifth Friday and climbed to third place overall following disappointing 20th and 39th place finishes in the regatta’s first two races.

“A lot of boats had good speed upwind. We sailed strong and had two good starts,” added Sperry. “After the way we started the regatta, we just stayed calm and tried to chip away a little bit at a time. If we would have done a little better earlier in the week, things could have been different.”

The prestigious Trofeo Bacardi was presented to the winners dockside, where Domingos, Santos and Tito Argamasilla-Bacardi, the retired former vice president of public relations at Bacardi USA, drank Bacardi Rum from the Cup in a tradition that dates to the first Bacardi Cup Regattas in Cuba in the 1920s.

More than 110 teams representing 26 countries competed in the 81st Bacardi Cup Star Class Regatta, one of the most competitive Star Class events in the world. The regatta is co-hosted by the Coral Reef Yacht Club and the U.S. Sailing Center, both based in Coconut Grove, and is sponsored by BACARDI U.S.A., Inc.