Peter Burling & Blair Tuke

Peter Burling was born in Tauranga on New Year's Day 1991 and started sailing at six in an old wooden Optimist called Jellytip on the estuary near his house. He was national Optimist champion at twelve, and at fifteen he and Carl Evans won the 420 World Championship, the youngest sailors ever to do it. They won it again the following year. At seventeen, still at Tauranga Boys' College, he became the youngest sailor ever to represent New Zealand at an Olympics, finishing eleventh in the 470 in Beijing.

Everything after that he did with Blair Tuke. Silver in the 49er at London 2012, New Zealand's hundredth Olympic medal. Then a run between 2012 and 2016 where they won all 28 major regattas they entered, followed by gold in Rio with two races to spare and the biggest winning margin in Olympic sailing in fifty years. Six world titles, and silver in Tokyo decided on countback.

Burling helmed Emirates Team New Zealand to three straight America's Cup wins in 2017, 2021 and 2024, the first man to do that since the 1930s. He left the team in 2025 and now sails for Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli. He co-owns and helms the Black Foils in SailGP with Tuke, and the two of them founded the marine conservation charity Live Ocean.

Blair Tuke was born in Kerikeri in July 1989 and learned to sail through his high school's sailing academy and the Kerikeri Cruising Club, a long way from the traditional Auckland yachting scene. He trained as an electrician and is still qualified.

He teamed up with Peter Burling after school and the two of them became the most dominant pairing the 49er class has seen. Silver at London 2012, then four straight world titles and a clean sweep of every major regatta in the cycle, then gold in Rio, where they were also New Zealand's flagbearers. Two more world titles followed, six in total, and a silver in Tokyo lost on countback. They were named World Sailors of the Year together in 2015.

Away from the skiff he has been foils controller for three winning America's Cup campaigns with Emirates Team New Zealand and finished second in the Volvo Ocean Race on Mapfre. He has signed on for a fourth Cup with Team New Zealand, defending in Naples in 2027, which means he and Burling will be on opposite boats for the first time in their careers. He is also co chief executive and wing trimmer for the Black Foils, and co founded Live Ocean with Burling in 2019.