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| SKIPPER:GEOFF
MEEK |
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NATIONALITY: South
African
RESIDENCE: CapeTown,South Africa
DATE OF BIRTH(YEAR): 51years old
TEAM: SHOSHOLOZA for America's
Cup2007
CREW LIST: Alex Runciman , Marc Mallac-Lagesse
, Guido Verhovert |
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| Additional Information: |
Meek is a world champion South African yachtsman
who was the alternate skipper for the British team
in their pre-America's Cup trials in Freemantle
in 1987. As a skipper and helmsman he has won many
international big boat yacht racing championships
over the years, among them the Fastnet Race and
Cowes Week in the UK, the Sydney Hobart Race, the
SORC Race Week in Miami, Block Island Race Week
off New York,
Sardinia Cup, the Southern Cross Cup in Sydney
and the Onion Patch regatta in Newport, US.
He was also invited to skipper one of the 82 foot
Maxi's in a European Series organised by Ernesto
Bertarelli, head of the Swiss Alinghi Challenge,
the current America's Cup defending champions.
As skipper of the official South African entry
in the series he won the Cowes Week regatta of
the circuit. He spent four years in the 1970's
racing extensively on the international yacht racing
circuit in the United States, the UK and Europe
and studied sailmaking in the UK. He returned to
South Africa in the late '70's to open his own
sail loft in Cape Town. He is still a sailmaker
by profession and a director of North Sails, South
Africa.
Meek has won every major offshore regatta in South Africa and holds the record
of 20 Table Bay Race Week championship titles.He has skippered five Lipton Challenge
Cup regattas, two of which were winning campaigns with Royal Cape Yacht Club
and Hermanus Yacht Club.. He has been South African Yachtsman of the Year five
times and has been awarded SA Colours for yachting six times. He has also been
awarded the State President's Sports Merit Award. It has always been his dream
to skipper a South African Challenge in the America's Cup and he came close to
doing so 12 years ago, but political factors intervened. For him, the current
campaign represents more than a dream come true.
Meek is 51 years old and grew up in Cape Town racing dinghies. |
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