Erik Heil & Thomas Ploessel

Erik Heil was born in Berlin in August 1989 and learned to sail at Tegeler Segel-Club, a long way inland from the sea. He met Thomas Plößel as a kid and the two sailed their first regatta together in May 2001, when Heil was eleven. They stayed together for the next twenty three years, which is close to unheard of in a class where partnerships usually last one Olympic cycle.

Heil steered from the back of the boat for all of it. Bronze at Rio 2016, world championship silver in 2019, world bronze in 2020, then a second Olympic bronze in Tokyo. Germany has not had a more successful Olympic sailing crew in the last twenty years. They raced under the burgee of Norddeutscher Regatta Verein.

The pair chose not to campaign for Paris 2024, mostly because the new equipment rules made a competitive programme a full time job neither of them could take on. Heil was studying medicine at the time. He has since taken the helm of the Germany SailGP team, founded in 2023 with backing from Sebastian Vettel, where he races as Erik Kosegarten-Heil.

Thomas Plößel was born in April 1988 and came up through the same Berlin sailing scene as Erik Heil. Their first race together was in May 2001. By the time they stopped, they had been a team for 7,777 days, which they counted.

Plößel sailed the front of the boat throughout. The two of them took bronze in the 49er at Rio 2016, silver at the 2019 World Championships, bronze at the Worlds a year later, and a second Olympic bronze in Tokyo. They sailed for Norddeutscher Regatta Verein and were the most decorated German Olympic sailing crew of their generation.

They walked away from Olympic campaigning before Paris rather than half commit to it. Plößel put the number on it publicly, roughly half a million euros over two years to do it properly, and he had a career as an engineer at Reckmann Yacht Equipment that he was not willing to pause. He has stayed close to the class since, passing on what they learned to the younger German crews.