Marlow Ropes Award for Phipps and Boniface

Falmouth's Tom Phipps (right) collects his Marlow Ropes Award from Pete Lillingston © Mark Jardine

Falmouth's Tom Phipps and Eastbourne's Nicola Boniface are the latest members of the British Sailing Team's Podium Potential squad to be awarded the Marlow Ropes Award following their tenth place finish at the Nacra 17 World Championships in Clearwater, Florida in February.

The Marlow Ropes Award was introduced in 2002 with the aim of rewarding Britain's most promising young sailors for their determination, focus and talent. Phipps and Boniface will have £2500 to spend at Marlow Ropes over the next year.

This is the duo's first top ten finish at a Nacra 17 World Championships, having finished 24th at the 2015 edition. Since teaming up last year the pair have gone from strength to strength including an 11th place at the European Championships in September.

Phipps was at the RYA Suzuki Dinghy Show to accept the award: "Thank you very much to Marlow Ropes for the award. This will directly go towards what Nikki and I are trying to do and will make a difference."

"For us on the Nacra we seem to go through rope like nothing else so to be able to have a great supply of rope from Marlow, which is top quality stuff, will help us hugely on the water."

Phipps and Boniface are currently in Palma training for their next event, said Phipps: "The next regatta for us is the Princess Sofia Regatta in Palma at the end of the month and we want to start using the ropes straight away."

Their first purchase will be for Boniface explained Phipps: "Nikki is always asking for a new mainsheet so that is probably first on the list, but what is really important to us is minimal stretch, on ropes like the spinnaker halyard because we want that to be as firm and as solid as possible."

Milly Stone, Marketing Executive, Marlow Ropes said: "The Marlow Ropes Award was designed to try and help the up and coming sailors, giving them all the equipment they need to move forward with their sailing career.

"In all the years that we have run the Marlow Ropes Award we have always received great feedback from the sailors and worked with them extensively on new products for each Olympic cycle which is invaluable. It is hugely important for us to work with the British Sailing Team, not only to help our British team but also because we find that working with them is vital as the feedback we receive is influential in developing and improving our products at Marlow."

As well as supporting up-and-coming sailors, Marlow Ropes are also the official supplier to the British Sailing Team thanks to its industry-renowned reputation for producing products tried, tested and trusted in the world's harshest environments.

For further information on Marlow Ropes including the latest products and technical information visit www.marlowropes.com.

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