Christophe Espagnon | |
Birth Date: | 6 January 1976 |
Birth Place: | Talence, France |
Weight: | 790NaN0 |
Classes: | Multihull |
Club: | Société des Régates Rochelaises |
Coach: | Philippe Neiras |
Show-Medals: | yes |
Christophe Espagnon (born 6 January 1976) is a French sailor, who specialized in the multihull (Tornado) class.[1] Together with his partner Xavier Revil, he was named one of the country's top sailors in the mixed multihull catamaran for the 2008 Summer Olympics, finishing in a distant eleventh position.[2] Outside his Olympic career, he and Revil gave the home crowd a further reason to celebrate with a bronze-medal finish at the 2005 Tornado Worlds in La Rochelle.[3] A member of La Rochelle Sailing Regatta (French: Société des Régates Rochelaises), Espagnon trained most of his competitive sporting career under the tutelage of his personal coach Philippe Neiras.[4]
Espagnon competed for the French sailing squad, as a 32-year-old crew member in the Tornado class, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Building up their Olympic selection, he and skipper Revil finished a credible sixth in the golden fleet phase to lock one of the eleven quota places offered at the 2007 ISAF Worlds in Cascais, Portugal.[5] The French duo started the series with a fantastic top-four mark on the second race; however, a broken halyard lock before race 4 and a wave of unimpressive tenths towards the final stretch bumped Espagnon and Revil out of the medal hunt to eleventh overall by a slight margin, amassing 69 net points.[2] [6] [7]