J.P.Morgan BAR's gold medallists set for racing return on Olympic waters

J.P. Morgan BAR on the final day of Extreme Sailing Series Act 2 © Lloyd Images

J. P. Morgan BAR's Olympic gold medallists, Ben Ainslie, Paul Goodison and Pippa Wilson, are gearing up for a return to China's 'Olympic Sailing City', Qingdao, for Act 3 of the Extreme Sailing Series.

The winning trio are back racing in the Chinese city for the first time since their success at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, six years ago, joining teammates Matt Cornwell and Nick Hutton for four days of extreme racing on Fushan Bay.

This year marks the fourth consecutive year the series has returned to Qingdao waters, with racing running from Thursday 1st May until Sunday 4th. The 12 Extreme Sailing teams have been pre-warned to 'expect the unexpected' from one of the most notorious ESS stadium racecourses.

Beijing Olympic Champion, Wilson, one of the few women competing on the ESS circuit, won her gold medal in the Yngling class. She will go head to head with former Yngling British teammate, Sarah Ayton, who is also competing on the 2014 series with The Wave, Muscat. Fresh from competing with the British Sailing Team at the ISAF Sailing World Cup event, Hyeres – France, she commented, "It's great to revisit China, I've not been back since the Games and it looks like it has changed a lot.

As a sailing venue though, it's tricky - anything could happen. Whilst we were competing at the Olympics it was fairly light but this time round we are expecting it to be quite a bit windier, so potentially lots of drama and action! There's a lot of tide too so that could be challenging for us, but, we will do what we always do, just take the racing one day at a time."

Tactician, Paul Goodison continued "Qingdao is a special place for us and I have some great memories of training and racing here so it's nice to be back competing in China. But, it is a testing racing venue with difficult sailing conditions.

Despite the boat failure on our last day in Oman, we were racing really well, it was all coming together and there are a lot of positives to from our last event. We are now feeling more prepared and looking forward our next event in the series."

Heading into Act 3, 2013 series champions, The Wave, Muscat, currently sit first overall followed by Swiss entry, Alinghi and Emirates Team New Zealand. For all the latest J.P. Morgan BAR news and updates from Act 3 follow www.jpmorganbarblog.com or on Twitter @JPMorganBAR.