Between 1956 and 1965, John Cuneo won seven Australian national sailing titles across two Sharpie classes, before experimenting with different vessels and eventually settling on the Dragon class. It was in this category that he won back-to-back national championships in 1968 and 1969, and earned himself the opportunity to represent his country at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. There he finished fifth overall with John Ferguson and Tom Anderson. Four years later in Munich, however, with John Shaw replacing Ferguson, Cuneo’s crew won the Dragon class event by a considerable margin. In the interim, Cuneo had come in second at the 1969 World Championships.
In 1974 Cuneo was briefly part of the Australian Southern Cross that challenged for, but ultimately lost, that year’s America’s Cup. He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1986 and the Queensland Sport Hall of Fame in 2009. He received the Medal of the Order of Australia in the 2018 Queen’s Birthday Honours for his services to sailing.
Australia