Chris Draper & Simon Hiscocks

Chris Draper was born March 20, 1978, in Sheffield. He started sailing at seven and came through the RYA Youth squad under Jim Saltonstall, winning both the Youth and Senior 420 National Championships in 1996 and a Laser 2 silver at the ISAF Youth Worlds. He won the British 470 Olympic trials in 2000, but selectors chose the other team for Sydney; he switched to the 49er for the Athens cycle, teaming with Simon Hiscocks to build one of the strongest records in the class: Worlds silver (2002), gold (2003), Olympic bronze (2004), Worlds silver (2005) and gold (2006). Draper moved into the America's Cup in 2011 with Team Korea, then helmed Luna Rossa 2012-2015, reaching the 2013 Louis Vuitton Cup final — the only British helmsman to reach a Cup final until Barcelona 2024. He went on to manage SoftBank Team Japan, became Head of Performance for Athena Pathway in 2023, and joined Emirates Team New Zealand in 2025 for the 38th America's Cup. He lives in Lytchett Matravers, Dorset, with his wife and two children.

Simon Hiscocks won this, his second Olympic medal, with skipper Chris Draper, having won silver at Sydney 2000 with Ian Barker. Across the two cycles, Hiscocks and Draper's partnership produced a run of Worlds medals (silver 2002, gold 2003, silver 2005, gold 2006) either side of the Athens bronze, making Hiscocks one of a handful of sailors to medal at consecutive 49er Olympics with two different skippers. After Olympic campaigning he raced America's Cup with GreenCom, became a leading figure in Foiling Moth racing, and founded Shock Sailing, supplying parts, repairs and brokerage for high-performance dinghies. He lives in Portland, Dorset, with his two children.