Champ sailor for 2012

Draper says: it's not curtains

As the London 2012 Olympics draw closer, former world champion and Athens bronze medallist sailor Chris Draper has announced he'll come out of retirement and go for gold once more.

Draper's ambitions are notorious and he has made no secret of his disappointment when his team narrowly missed gold for Britain in Athens in 2004. Draper’s breakthrough in his 49er class came two years earlier when he and team-mate Simon Hiscocks finished second at the World Championships in Hawaii. They also dominated the 2003 Worlds in Cadiz where they managed to earn Team GBR a selection for the Athens Games. Despite his upset at not winning gold at the Olympics, the duo had another World Championship win in 2006. However, they seemed to run aground when British 49er rivals Steve Morrison and Ben Rhodes pipped them to the post and were selected for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

At that point Draper decided to take early retirement from competitive sailing. “We put in so much effort between 2000 and 2004 that we were shot to bits,” he said. In four years the 31-year old had forged a solid career in professional sailing. Now he has decided to return to the Olympic trail, determined to reach the top and bag a gold medal for Great Britain.

Armed with both a new rig and a new partner, Peter Greenhalgh, Draper is confident that team GBR will top the medal table in London 2012. "The fact that we’re heading for a home Olympics has been a huge factor as well,” he has said. Perhaps 2012 will see the previously elusive glimmer of gold becoming a reality.