‘We can hold our heads high’ – Hayling Islander James Peters after failing to win a medal on Olympic sailing debut in France

Peters and 49er partner Fynn Sterritt went into the crucial Paris 2024 medal race today with an outside chance of a medal, lying seventh going into the double-points contest.

The pair’s hyper-aggressive approach did not pay off as they finished seventh in a medal-race field of ten - and that was where they landed overall.

“We went out with a plan to try to attack it and try to win the race,” said Peters.

“We maybe didn’t start in quite the right place. But we absolutely tried to make every opportunity to just try and pass boats.

“It wasn’t quite enough, but we can hold our heads high right until the end. When the dust settles, we’ll probably look back and be proud of ourselves.”

A shot at Olympic glory had been a long time coming for Sterritt and Peters, who narrowly missed out on a place at Tokyo 2020 to eventual gold medallist Stu Bithell and Dylan Fletcher-Scott.

Now coached by Bithell, they got off to a slow start amid shifty, light winds at Marseille Marina.

A podium push was just beyond their reach despite a run of five top-ten finishes in six races in the middle of the regatta.

An emotional Peters was crushed by the outcome but able to see a silver lining.

“We saw ourselves as one of the teams that could be challenging,” he remarked.

“Things have gone really well, and we saw ourselves very much standing on the podium at the end of the week.

“We saw how tight things are, we got tacked on and slowed down probably three times. It didn’t quite go to plan but, on another occasion, it may have.

“It hurts, but we’re proud of ourselves. We said when we came here, we can’t control the outcome but what we can control is how we conduct ourselves, how we perform on the racecourse and how we stay together as a team and stay strong, and we did that.

“We fought every second of every race, we never had a moment when we were behind, we gave up or we thought we couldn’t do it, even when things are against us.

“It wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t bad. We’ll hopefully be able to be proud of ourselves.”

*Follow the British Sailing Team at Paris 2024 on Instagram at @britishsailing and on www.britishsailingteam.com