Langley's Gladiator slays all in Marseilles Med Cup Arena

Gladiator, the Langley Holdings sponsored TP52 racing yacht, notched up it's first win in the second Act of the Audi Med Cup in Marseilles today, taking first place in the second race. A fifth place finish in the first race put the Gladiator, with group chairman Tony Langley at the helm, top boat for the day.

In a scene reminiscent of the film "Gladiator", starring Russell Crowe, where in a re-enactment of the battle of Carthage, the mighty Roman Empire is slayed by the Barbarians, the outcome wasn't supposed to have been how it turned out in Marseilles either, with Gladiator taking a convincing win over seven other TP52's crewed by the cream of yacht racing, including Germany's multiple Olympic Medal winner, Jochim Schumann and 2010 Americas Cup winning helm, Ed Baird.

After a poor start the Gladiator team tacked to the right of the course, along with the Russian boat Synergy and the German Audi All4One, leaving the rest of the pack battling for supremacy on the left side of the course. The move paid off and the Gladiator rounded the windward mark in third place. A good first run saw the under-dog close gauge and after dropping the spinnaker at the leeward mark while gybing in a high risk manoeuvre known as a "Kiwi" (so called after the New Zealand team used it to devastating effect to take the 1995 Americas Cup) constantly challenge the lead boats to the second windward mark where the two lead boats bared away to set spinnakers while the Langley team gybed on the mark to set theirs in another high risk manoeuvre known as an "Indian". The two lead boats remained on course duelling each other down the final run, leaving Gladiator un-covered and with the last two gybed perfectly executed, took the race by less than a length over Synergy.

Speaking afterwards on Audi Med Cup TV, Mr Langley said:
"We came into the Med Cup with very low expectations against very high budget programmes and some of the best sailors in the world. I kind of hoped that if we took a few risks we might be able to take a few places but I never expected a win against this kind of competition."

About Audi Med Cup

The Audi Med Cup (www.madcap.org) is the world's foremost yacht racing circuit, played out over five regattas around the Mediterranean and Portugal. This year's venues are Cascaish (Portugal) Marseilles, Cagliari (Sardinia) and Barcelona, with a World Championship regatta held in Porto Cervo also in Sardinia in October.

About Langley Holdings

Langley Holdings plc is a diverse privately owned UK based engineering group, specialising in capital equipment technologies that are either outright leaders in their field, or niche players. Its principal operating divisions are located in the UK, Germany and France and have a network of over 30 subsidiaries in 17 countries, employing around 2,200 people worldwide. www.langleyholdings.com