The much-hyped Great Britain Sail Grand Prix takes place in Plymouth Sound this weekend, with the British team looking to put on a strong performance for their home crowd.
The Great Britain F50, driven by Olympic gold medalist Paul Goodison (GBR) for the British event, took flight in spectacular conditions on the Plymouth Sound for the first time today in the first official practice session of the week.
“I’m super excited”, Paul said ahead of the first practice day, “walking around today and looking out from the Hoe you can see the wind is in already, the sun is shining, and it looks like fantastic sailing conditions.
“It’s been a long time since I raced on home waters in front of a large crowd, probably London 2012 was the last time, so again I’m just really excited. We’ve got a great team here and really looking forward to flying the Union Jack in front of our supporters.
“We’ve got big expectations for this event, we obviously want to do better than last time and challenge for the podium spots, we’ve got two days of practice and we’re just polishing the things that were a little unpolished in Taranto.”
For their home event, the British team have been joined this week by four female athlete triallists, representing the final Grand Prix of the team’s trials. After Plymouth, one triallist will be selected to join the British team full time.
Trialling with the team this week are Ellie Aldridge (GBR), Nicola Boniface (GBR), Hannah Diamond (GBR) and Emily Nagel (GBR). The team was previously joined by Olympic bound sailors Hannah Mills (GBR) in Bermuda and Anna Burnet (GBR) in Taranto.
