Burling and Tuke make Queen’s New Year’s Honours List

New Zealand’s star sailing duo of Peter Burling and Blair Tuke have been made Members of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List for 2017.

“It’s a massive honour for myself, and something that really caps off an amazing year with pretty good success in Rio, we couldn’t have much better there,” Burling told Radio Sport.

“We’ve been pretty busy with some Team NZ stuff since then, we haven’t really had much time to reflect on all we’ve achieved this year but it’s an amazing honour.

“It’s obviously a massive, massive honour and something that I’ll have for the rest of my life, so it’s definitely something I’m gonna be pretty proud of for years to come, but it’s still just sinking in at the moment.”

No stranger to awards, Burling and Tuke were named World Sailors of the year in 2015 among countless other accolades, but Burling says that this is “pretty far up there”.

The pair have enjoyed great success on the water, winning four consecutive 49er class World Championships (2013-2016) – the first to do so – and every major 49er regatta between the London 2012 Olympics and Rio 2016 Olympics, culminating in a gold medal.

“It’s pretty cool to be able to share it with Blair who I’ve obviously done all the Olympic stuff with.

The pair were also captains of the New Zealand Olympic team that went to Rio and came back our most successful Olympic team ever.

They have another big year looming with the America’s Cup taking place in 2017.

“Both of us haven’t really had any time off since the Olympics and have both been straight back into training with Team NZ and the development of the Cup boat. That’s something we’re really enjoying,” said 25-year-old Burling.

“A week off at the moment, that’s pretty much the only week we’ve had since the Games and all we’ll probably have until the America’s Cup. We’ll definitely be looking to have a few weeks off, a few months off after that to sit back and reflect on what we’ve managed to achieve over the last little while and make some decisions as to what’s next.”

Source: NZ Herald