| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | 4 April 1991 [1] Portsmouth, England | ||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.83 m (6 ft 0 in) [2] | ||||||||||||||
| Sailing career | |||||||||||||||
| Class | Laser | ||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Sam Meech (born 4 April 1991) is a New Zealand sailor who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics. [3]
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | 4 April 1991 [1] Portsmouth, England | ||||||||||||||
| Height | 1.83 m (6 ft 0 in) [2] | ||||||||||||||
| Sailing career | |||||||||||||||
| Class | Laser | ||||||||||||||
Medal record
| |||||||||||||||
Sam Meech (born 4 April 1991) is a New Zealand sailor who won a bronze medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics. [3]
Meech was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1991. [2] The sailor Molly Meech is his younger sister; almost exactly two years his junior. [4] When he was three and a half years old, their parents gave up their house and the family lived on a boat for the next decade; the siblings attribute their affinity to water to this period of their lives. [5] He received his secondary education at Tauranga Boys' College, where fellow Olympic sailors Jason Saunders (born 1990) and Peter Burling (born 1991) were his contemporaries. [6]
Meech finished 34th in the Laser class at the 2011 ISAF Sailing World Championships and won a Halberg emerging talent award in 2011.
In 2013 he won the men's Laser race at the Sail for Gold competition and in 2014 he won the men's Laser competition at the EUROSAF Champions Sailing Cup. He was part of the New Zealand team that won the 2013 Youth America's Cup. [7]
Close friends Meech and Andy Maloney had an intense battle to win New Zealand's selection for the one quota spot for the 2016 Summer Olympics. [8] [9] Meech won a bronze medal in the 2015 ISAF Sailing World Cup sailing regatta in Miami (USA) in January, and a silver medal at a later regatta in Hyères (France) in April; these results won him the selection over Maloney. [10] Meech and Josh Junior made up the last two Olympic nominees of the New Zealand sailing team in May 2016. [11] Meech won a bronze medal in the Laser class; the first time that a New Zealand competitor has won an Olympic medal in this class. [8] His sister, Molly Meech, also competed for New Zealand at the 2016 Olympics in the 49er FX class alongside Alex Maloney, the sister of Andy Maloney. [4]
Tauranga Boys' College is a state secondary school for boys, located on the edge of the downtown area of Tauranga, New Zealand. The school was founded in 1946 as Tauranga College, before overcrowding saw the school become single-sex in 1958. The school has a roll of 2171 students from years 9 to 13 as of August 2024. In 2019 Tauranga Boys' gained the most scholarships in the Bay of Plenty region with 31 scholarships and 6 outstanding scholarships.
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Xu Lijia is a Chinese sailboat racer who won a bronze medal in women's Laser Radial class at the 2008 Summer Olympics and a gold medal in the same event at the 2012 Summer Olympics, where she was the flag bearer for China at the closing ceremony.
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Pavlos Kontides is a Cypriot sailor. He became the first Cypriot athlete ever to win an Olympic medal for his country, by winning the silver medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics in the Men's Laser class behind Tom Slingsby, then twelve years later in Paris getting another medal of the same color behind Australia's Matthew Wearn. He won the International Sports Prize World Athlete of the Year award in 2012. On Tuesday 19 of September 2017, Kontides took the 1st place in 2017 ILCA World Championship in Split, Croatia, becoming a World Champion. He won the championship again in 2018, as well as a silver in 2013.
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Cyprus competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. This was the nation's tenth consecutive appearance at the Summer Olympics.
New Zealand competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016. This was the nation's twenty-third appearance as an independent nation at the Summer Olympics, having made its debut at the 1920 Games and competed at every Games since. The New Zealand team consisted of 199 athletes, 100 women and 99 men, across twenty sports, the first time New Zealand was represented by more women than men at the Summer Olympics.
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Charlotte Fletcher-Scott is a British sailor who competed at the 2016 Summer Olympics and 2020 Summer Olympics.
Molly Meech is a New Zealand sailor.
Alexandra Maria Maloney is a New Zealand sailor.
Josh Junior is a New Zealand Olympic and international sailor.
Andrew Maloney is a New Zealand professional sailor born on 2 June 1990.
