Chris Dickson (sailor)

Chris Dickson

Dickson in holiday mode at Matakana, New Zealand
Personal information
Full name	Christopher Stuart Dickson
Born	(1961-11-03) 3 November 1961 (age 55) Auckland, New Zealand
Medal record World Championship 1988 Perth Match racing 1989 Lymington Match racing 1991 Hamilton Match racing

Christopher Stuart "Chris" Dickson, MBE (born 3 November 1961 in Auckland), is a sailor from New Zealand. He was world youth champion three years in succession and later became world match race champion three times. He also skippered several yachts in America's Cup racing, and for New Zealand at the 2000 Summer Olympics, and in numerous other sailing competitions.

As skipper of Tokio he looked set to win the W60 class in the 1993–94 Whitbread Round the World Race until the boat was dismasted in the fifth leg. He also skippered Larry Ellison's 78 foot maxi yacht Sayonara to line honours in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and in four world championship regattas.

Dickson sailed from an early age, starting out in the Sabot and P Class boats, before graduating to Lasers and 470s. In 1977 he won both the Tanner Cup and Tauranga Cup for P Class events with a perfect zero points score in both. These events were subsequently won by other noted New Zealand skippers, Russell Coutts (1978) and Dean Barker (1988). By the time he turned 15 he had won every regatta possible, from match racing between clubs to provincial and national championships.

The year after his Tanner-Tauranga cups double, Dickson won the first of his three ISAF Youth World Championships, with David McKay in the 420 at Perth, Western Australia. He won again the following year in the 420 at Livorno, Italy with his high school class mate Hamish Wilcox, and again the following year (1980) at Fort Worth, Texas in the Laser 11 with Sean Reeves.