Taylor Canfield rounding the windwark on the last day of racing

Taylor Canfield from St Thomas placed eighth in the 30-boat Optimist flleet of the inaugural Renaissance Reinsurance Junior Gold Cup held concurrently with the Investors Guraranty presentation of the King Edward VII Gold Cup this week in Bermuda.

Taylor racked up his best result today with a third place in windy conditions on Hamiltion Harbour; as one of the largest competitors in the competition he suffered on some of the lighter wind days. Hometown boy Oliver Riihilouma won with 25 points, Lukasz Przybytek from Poland was second by a hair with 26 points and Paul Snow-Hansen from New Zealand was third with 31 points.

The Royal Bermuda Yacht Club and the Bermuda Optimist Dinghy organised the development program which welcomed some of the world's most accomplished youth sailors from Australia, Denmark, Finland, Poland, New Zealand, Sweden, the U.S., the U.K. and U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as 21 Bermudian Optimist sailors.

Over the course of the week, the juniors raced in Bermuda's Great Sound and Granaway Deep. The week also included an opportunity to learn more about sailing through practical drills in Optimists and ‘chalk talks’ with the world's top sailors.

"If you talk to the Gold Cup competitors, you will find a great number of them grew up racing Optis and developed lifelong friends around the world," said Les Crane, commodore of the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club. "For the past several years we have taken the opportunity to have the sailors coach our local young sailors. With the help of Renaissance Reinsurance we are able to bring some of the world's best Opti sailors to Bermuda to join in that experience. We want to start these young sailors off early in one of the finest traditions in sailing."

Download final results here.

Bermuda juniors participating (alphabetical listing): James Anfossi, Anthony Bailey, Ben Bernardo, Sean Bouchard, Blake Burgess, Jonathan Dill, Campbell Duffy, Martin Finegan, Lance Fraser, Eleanor Gardner, Joshua Greenslade, William Hutchings, Peter Miller, Johnny Norfleet, Cameron Pimentel, Haley Powell, Oliver Riihiluoma, Jordan Saints, Jason Saints, Ryan Saraiva, Elijah Simmons

International junior participants (alphabetical with home country: Taylor Canfield (U.S. Virgin Islands), Nicklas Dackhammar (Sweden), Mikko Hentinen (Finland), Devin Laviano (USA), Hannah Mills (U.K.), Hannah Nattrass (Australia), Lukasz Prsybytek (Poland), Nicolai Sehested (Denmark) and Paul Snow-Hansen (New Zealand).

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