Espagnon competed for the French sailing squad, as a 32-year-old crew member in the Tornado class, at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Building up their Olympic selection, he and skipper Revil finished a credible sixth in the golden fleet phase to lock one of the eleven quota places offered at the 2007 ISAF Worlds in Cascais, Portugal. The French duo started the series with a fantastic top-four mark on the second race; however, a broken halyard lock before race 4 and a wave of unimpressive tenths towards the final stretch bumped Espagnon and Revil out of the medal hunt to eleventh overall by a slight margin, amassing 69 net points.