Busy women's Olympic sailing week

As Skandia Team GBR's sailors head for Lysekil and Japan

Skandia Team GBR’s packed summer sailing schedule turns its focus on the female disciplines this week, with racing at the ISAF Women’s Match Racing World Championship and the Laser Radial World Championship due to get underway tomorrow.

Some of Britain’s top 2012 prospects will be vying for honours, with Lucy Macgregor leading a six-woman team in Lysekil, Sweden at the World Championship for the newest women’s Olympic discipline.

Macgregor - currently third in the ISAF women’s match racing world rankings – and her team of Annie Lush, Ally Martin, Bird Watson, Jo Ryley and Mary Rook will compete against 11 other international crews across five days in Lysekil. They’ll race in demanding DS37 boats which need a crew of six, compared to the Elliot 6m which is the new three-person boat chosen for the 2012 Olympic Games sailing competition and raced just once so far at the ISAF Sailing World Cup event in Kiel last month.

“Although we have not sailed together or sailed on the DS37s anywhere near as much as some of the other teams, we all know each other very well and are really confident as a team,” Macgregor, 22, explained.

“Annie, Ally and I feel like we’ve made great progress so far this season. We’re really looking forward to [the Worlds] as probably the toughest event of the season so far, on a technical basis, physically, plus the best entry list with very few of the top teams missing.”

Meanwhile in the far east, Skandia Team GBR’s single-handed sailors are preparing for their world championship assault at the Laser Radial Worlds in Karatsu, Japan.

All sailors endured a tough regatta at the recent Laser Radial Europeans in Charlottenlund, Denmark, where 23-year-old Charlotte Dobson was the highest-placed British sailor. She finished ninth after a strong start to the event, so will be looking to build on that with a solid performance in Japan.

Andrea Brewster will have in mind her outstanding performance at last year’s Laser Radial Worlds where she claimed bronze for Skandia Team GBR, while former 470 sailor Christina Bassadone, competing in her first Radial Worlds, and development squad talent Alison Young will also be looking to make their mark in the 88-boat, 30 nation World Championship fleet.

The ISAF Women’s Match Racing World Championship runs through until Saturday 1 August, with the Laser World Championship concluding on Sunday 2 August.