British Tornado twosome Leigh McMillan and Will Howden have finished eighth in their final regatta before departing for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

The Tornado European Championship at Thessaloniki, Greece, saw local heroes Iordanis Pachalidis and Kostas Trigonis capture the European title, amid fickle sea breeze conditions over the course of the five day regatta. McMillan and Howden were eighth from the 22-strong international fleet, and the sixth placed European boat.

The Skandia Team GBR pairing picked up a win in the fourth race of the nine race series, but were punished with scores of 11, 14 on day three to mar an otherwise steady series until then. McMillan and Howden went into the final day of racing on Saturday (21 June) in fifth place.

After a postponement waiting for the breeze to settle, the Brits clung on with a fifth in the penultimate race of the Championship, but the 13 ^th which followed in the final race of the regatta saw them finish their Beijing warm-up in eighth place overall.

The last race killed us, Howden explained. Straight after the start we fell into a hole and never managed to get back into the fleet to make any places up.

The pair will enjoy a short break before heading back out to Qingdao for pre-Games training out in Fushan Bay, with Howden confident the Europeans have been a useful stepping stone in their Olympic campaign.

We have learned a lot this week about the kit that we want to use for the Games, so it has been a useful week for us.