Man from Send wins round-the-world sailing race
Oliver Hooton entered the race in memory of his wife, who died of cancer.
A business analyst from Send has won a round-the-world sailing race, having entered in memory of his wife who died of cancer.
Oliver Hooton lost his wife back in 2022 - and has spent eleven months at sea, taking in the likes of South Africa, Vietnam and the United States.
He finished the Round The World Yacht Race as part of a team on a 70 foot racing yacht, having passed six oceans and the equator twice.
Oliver told us that his the memory of his wife Anna helped him through the tough challenge.
"You kind of look for things throughout the race to give you a lift and mine was always rainbows, which we associated with Anna.
"Sometimes when you're cracking along fast you get a lot of the spray off the bow and if the wind is in the right place you get little mini rainbows coming up in the bow.
"You can have a really rubbish day and all of a sudden you see a rainbow, that gives you a little bit of a lift."
Oliver said said it was a tight finish at the end.
"It got very competitive. We were doing everything we could to trim the boat. We knew that the people in second place. It was a very, very tense last hour... we were pretty sure we'd got it but it's not until you get a call from the race office to say you definitely got it that we knew we'd won and that was about a 40 minute wait.
"That 40 minutes was quite tense."