For all the latest stories regarding Nick and Joe read below.

Nick and Joe win Sail Melbourne but finish 9th at World championships

Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield started off their trip to Australia with a comfortable victory at grade 1 event Sail Melbourne. It looked as though they would take this good form through to the World championships and were winning at the half way stage, but faded towards the end of the regatta finishing in 9th overall. 'We felt as though we had what it takes to win both of the events but some poor starts at critical times cost us heavily, we feel disapointed at the moment but we have always known that this year is all about the Olympics at we still feel confident we are on the right path to peaking in August', said Joe. Next stop is light wind training with the british squad in Valencia.

A Gold at Sail Melbourne

470 Men Yesterday's top three overall place holders managed to stay in their spots after today's close Medal race, with Nick Rogers/Joe Glanfield (GBR) claiming Gold with a convincing first in the Medal race this afternoon in light wafty airs on the course just off host venue, Sandringham Yacht Club. Athens silver medallists Rogers/Glanfield really enjoyed their week of racing at Sandringham and are looking forward to next week’s ISAF Grade 1 470 World Championship at Sail Melbourne. "It's beautiful here. The best sailing place," Rogers said. The silver medal went to world ranked No.13 Sime Fantela/Igor Marenic (CRO) and bronze went to world ranked No.4 Mathew Belcher/Nicolas Behrens (AUS), who just missed selection into the 2008 Beijing Games. The pair was extremely pleased, particularly Belcher who has come fresh from winning the Moth Australian title. 'We are really pleased to win this event, espcially with how we performed in the light wind medal race, winning comfortably. We now need to step it up again for the world championships and put in a good challenge for the title'. said Nick

Nick and Joe leave for Australia

Nick and Joe have flown to Australia to compete in Sail Melbourne followed by the 2008 World championships. Sail Melbourne is in effect a warm up regatta for the Worlds but there will still be a world class fleet there and it counts as a grade 1 event for the ISAF World rankings. This is Nick and Joe's first international event since winning the Sail for Gold regatta and with 2008 being the Olympic year they will be keen to get off the New Year in winning ways. Sail Mebourne starts on the 14th January ending on the 19th with the world championships being between the 24th and 30th January.

Olympic Diary - September 2007

Having just completed the Skandia Sail For Gold Regatta we have finally come to the end of a very long, and important summer. This year was all about qualifying for the single British entry to compete at the 2008 Olympic games, as with most classes in Britain we had stiff competition for the position. Our strongest rivals were Nic Asher and Elliot Willis, we have always trained together as we believed learning from each other and keeping what we do confidential from other nations will help us become the best in the world, unfortunately only one of us would get to compete at the Olympics. Last year we won the Pre Olympic regatta in China whilst Asher and Willis won the world championships setting the scene for a big fight off to gain Olympic selection. In many ways them winning the World Championships played into our hands, until then we had always had the pressure of being favourites, once they became world champions the media viewed us equally, giving them some of the pressure we had. The reality is the world championships is the only regatta they have ever beaten us in so we were confident if we peaked for the trials we would be able to beat them. The first big hurdle was the Cascais World Championships during July, we needed to be first British boat and ideally in the top 3 to get the opportunity to compete at the Pre Olympic regatta the following month, a top 3 at this regatta would almost definitely hand us selection. Cascais is a notoriously windy venue so we made sure we put on a bit of weight and were fit and strong, we also worked hard on our boat handling and speed in strong winds. I had another complication thrown in there as my wife was expecting a baby, due the last day of Cascais. I desperately didn’t want to be away whilst the baby was born but also had to stay focused otherwise I would be returning home without a job! I remember when the first day of racing arrived Nick and I felt sick with nerves, this is a feeling we both normally welcome as we seem to sail better and more accurately whilst under pressure. We started the event well and after 3 races we were equal 1st overall. In the 4th race we were coming 3rd going onto the last downwind, the wind had picked up to 35 knots and there were big waves, the two boats in front of us did not put the spinnaker up but we were confident in our boat handling so thought we would go for it. Unfortunately it was not our boat handling we needed to worry about as soon as I set the spinnaker the force snapped the mast in half and left us sitting in the bottom of the boat covered in rigging. This was the first time we had snapped a mast in 7 years and the enormity of the situation hit us immediately. We could discard the race but it meant we had to complete another 6 races without another bad race, winning the event was going to be almost impossible and beating the then reigning world champions Asher and Willis was looking hard. That night we stayed at the marina till 10pm rigging a new mast, we sailed as safe and consistently as possible often having to come back from conservative starts and in the next three races we got 3,7,7 pushing us back up to 2nd overall. Then in the eighth race disaster struck we came around the windward mark and hoisted the spinnaker which caught on the spreader and ripped in half, we dropped to last place on the downwind and finished 34th which we had to count. We rigged up a new spinnaker and finished 6th in the next race and 2nd in the final medal race. This gave us 8th overall with our British rivals finishing 11th we had done enough to gain selection for the Pre Olympic regatta. We both felt proud when the regatta finished, we knew despite the overall position we had given one of our best performances. Our worst result was a 7th in any race without gear failure and without it we would have been comfortably in the medals and challenging the Australian winners. The best news of all was that I managed to get home before the baby was born and 10 days later we had a boy named Samuel (Sammy as he is now fondly known). After preparing for a strong wind venue we now had three weeks to prepare for the light winds of China. We both went on a big diet, this generally involved a lot of aerobic fitness and reducing the amount of fat and carbohydrate in our diet replacing it with fruit and vegetable, it was hard to start with but got easier once we were in the habit. We lost 6kg’s between us by the time we went to China. We sailed well at the regatta and finished 2nd behind the Australian World champions Wilmot and Page, we were 23 points ahead of 3rd and last year we won by 20 points so we are in a good position going into the final year. The British team overall sailed very well winning 5 golds and 1 silver with other sailors going close to the top 3. The announcement was made on the 18th September that we along with 7 other classes had been selected for the Olympic Games, it was a huge relief and we feel very lucky and honoured to be able to represent Great Britain at a third Olympic Games and try to win a gold. Now we have nearly a full year to fully prepare for the fairly unique conditions of China. I feel sorry for all the teams that didn’t get selected, some of them are of an incredibly good standard. Nic Asher and Elliot Willis are a very good 470 team and we hope that we can carry on training together towards both of our goals. Since Olympic selection we have already competed in another event, the Skandia Sail For Gold regatta held at the 2012 Olympic venue, Weymouth. We won the event and it was good training for the future as we had to sail the boat in 2nd place to the back of the fleet, something we had done to us during the 2004 Olympics. We now have two weeks at home free from sailing and are currently looking for supporting sponsors to get involved with us for the final year building up to the Olympics and beyond. On October 8th we are traveling back to China to spend some time training at the venue before Chinas bitterly cold winter arrives.

Rogers and Glanfield take Gold at Skandia Sail For Gold regatta

Nick Rogers and Joe Glanfield successfully defended their 2006 title at last weeks Skandia Sail For Gold Regatta. The event was held at Olympic 2012 venue Weymouth and saw a range of conditions from 5-25 knots. Nick and Joe sailed consistently counting all top3 positions meaning a top 3 in the all important medal race would be enough to win overall, and they finished 2nd meaning they won by a comfortable 10 points. Nick said there was key point in the regatta when they broke away from there nearest rivals. On Saturday we had quite light winds and we were well practised after sailing out in China during August. We won the first race whilst Nick Asher and Elliot Willis finished 7th and the Germans in third overall finished 6th. When we won the next race as well we had a clear gap which meant we could sail Asher and Willis to the back of the fleet forcing them to count there 7th'. Next on the horizon for Nick and Joe is a training camp in China to get extra time at the venue before winter sets in.

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