IAIN Percy has admitted it has been hard to return to action after the death of his team-mate and friend Andrew ‘Bart’ Simpson.

Percy, who partnered Simpson to Olympic gold in 2008 and silver in Weymouth a year ago today, held his lifelong friend – affectionately known as Bart after the television character Bart Simpson – as he died and can hardly bear to recall the incident.

Simpson, 36, from Sherborne, died when the Team Artemis catamaran capsized in San Francisco Bay while training for the America’s Cup.

The incident robbed Percy of his competitive drive and he admits it was hard to return to action with Artemis – even before considering his ongoing safety concerns over the crafts used.

He told the Daily Mail: “If it had been completely down to me I wouldn’t be here now. I would have liked more time,” he said. “I may have even packed in sailing altogether but it’s not just about me.

“There are 140 people working on Artemis and I owe it to them and their families as well, but I’m struggling to muster the competitive spirit I used to have in abundance.”

On the accident, he said: “We were in good spirits. The training had been pretty uneventful, the wind was only around 18 knots (23mph).

“One moment we’re chatting away next to each other, the next we’re in the water and the whole world has changed.

“It just doesn’t feel right that something so important, so brutal, can happen that quickly.

“The first thing you always do when you capsize is have a head count and it only took a few seconds to realise that Bart was missing.

“In the end the divers found him and the paramedics got to work but too much time had passed. I just held him as they tried to save him.

He added: “These boats are full-on. They’re sailing’s equivalent of For-mula One cars.

“They’re incredibly over-powered and that means they’re always on the edge.”

Percy and Simpson achieved Olympic silver last year but were gutted at the time to narrowly miss out on gold.

The Beijing 2008 Olympic cham-pions put on a dominant performance to defend their title but were pipped to the finish line by the Swedes Fredrik Loof and crew Max Salminen, who edged it by the tightest of margins.

The Swedish team won the medal race and scooped gold as Percy and Simpson finished seventh, just one place away from gaining overall victory.

The duo went into the final double-points race with an eight-point lead over the rest of the fleet.

They managed to beat their Brazil-ian rivals Robert Scheidt and Bruno Prada, who were their biggest threat to gold, but Loof and Salminen’s winning performance snatched gold from both crews.

Team GB’s Star helm Percy said he realised they had lost the gold 20 seconds before the finish.

He said: “You need to be 18 points ahead going into the medal race, there’s a big luck element and it wasn’t with us.

“We sailed 10 good races, there was a bit of a dice thrower at the end, we can’t blame anyone but ourselves.

“But at the same time Bart and I are really proud of the performance we put in this week, we were the top three boat in a lot of races.”