Together with his partner and America's World Cup competitor Iain Murray, he was named one of the country's top sailors in the all-male keelboat for the 2008 Summer Olympics, finishing in a distant fourteenth position. A full-time of the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club in Sydney, Palfrey trained for the Games under the tutelage of his Irish-born coach Euan McNichol.[3]
Palfrey competed for the Australian sailing squad, as a 41-year-old crew member in the Star class, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.[4][5] Leading up to their maiden Games, he and 50-year-old skipper Murray secured the Australians a definite top-nine finish in their respective boat at the 2007 ISAF Worlds in Cascais, Portugal.[6] The Australian duo stormed from behind at the very start to a fantastic runner-up finish in the midway of the series, before a streak of substandard outcomes in heavy winds, however, sent both Palfrey and Murray to the back of the 16-boat fleet. They sailed powerfully to eighth on the final leg, but their overall score was not enough to let the Aussies enter into the medal race, sitting them in a lowly fourteenth position with 96 net points.[7]
He has twice won the 5.5 Metre World Championship in 2010 and 2022 and in the same class won the 2022 Scandinavian Gold Cup represented Great Britain.
