| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nationality | |||||||||||||||
| Born | 6 January 1976 Talence, France | ||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.75 m (5 ft 9 in) | ||||||||||||||
| Weight | 79 kg (174 lb) | ||||||||||||||
| Sailing career | |||||||||||||||
| Class | Multihull | ||||||||||||||
| Club | Société des Régates Rochelaises | ||||||||||||||
| Coach | Philippe Neiras | ||||||||||||||
Medal record
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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]