superb showing in the final race of the Star World Championships.

A second-place finish out of a fleet of 102 in the sixth race of the series at the Annapolis Yacht Club on Saturday was enough to earn them qualification for their third successive Olympic Games.

Their efforts mean that three sailors will now be competing for Bermuda in Australia in September, as Pan-Am Games silver medallist Sara Lane Wright has already been awarded a wild card entry.

Bromby and White knew they had to finish in the top six of the countries who had not already qualifed for the Games to earn their berth in Sydney.

Before Saturday's race, they were lying seventh, having been overtaken by crews from Norway and Greece following 49th and 42nd-place finishes in the fourth and fifth races in the series.

The experienced Bermudians produced a grand finale, finishing runners-up to the German crew of Butzman and Peters, and claimed 16th place overall with a final record of 9-20-26-49-42-2. After their worst placing was discarded, they scored 99 points.

That enabled them to achieve their aim of overhauling both the Norwegian crew of Halvor Schoyen and Asmund Tharaldsen who finished 14th in Saturday's race, and the Greek crew of Leonidas Pelekanakis and Diustris Boukis, who finished 20th, to climb into the Olympic qualifying zone.

Bromby and White competed in the Star class at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, where they finished 19th.

They did slightly better in the Atlanta Games four years later, when they came 13th after the 10-race series on Wassaw Sound off Savannah, but that was still well short of their expectations.

The Star world champions are US pair Mark Reynolds and Magnus Lilijedahl, whose series of 1-3-22-3-1-28 gave them a winning total of 30 points.

Sydney-bound: Peter Bromby (left) and crew Lee White are heading for their third consecutive Olympic Games after qualifying at the Star Worlds on Saturday.