FRESH from celebrating Team GB selection, Dorset’s Lucy Macgregor is anticipating a ‘full-on’ year in preparation for the 2012 Games.
The Sailing star, who will represent Britain in the new women’s match racing Olympic class with her sister Kate Macgregor and teammate Annie Lush, said keeping secret about last week’s announcement was made easier by being out of the country.
All three of the Match Race Girls were born-and-bred in Poole and have high hopes of a podium place in the Elliot 6m keelboat event at the home Games.
Lucy and Kate’s proud parents Jim and Chris went to London to see their daughters named among the first 11 athletes chosen for Team GB.
Lucy, 24, said: “Our parents are very proud, it was nice that they could be there at the press conference as they’ve supported us so much over the years.
“We had to keep it a secret for a couple of days, although it wasn’t too hard because we were in America.
“All the sailors went for dinner the night before the announcement as a team, starting to build that bond between us all.
“It was really nice knowing that group of people are the group we’re going to go to the Games with and will share all those experiences and help each other out over the next few months.
“The likes of Ben [Ainslie], Iain [Percy] and Bart [Andrew Simpson] are all so supportive and easy to chat to.”
Lucy narrowly missed out on Olympic selection to the Beijing 2008 Games with helm Shirley Robertson and crew Annie Lush in the Yngling class.
She said: “I realised how much I wanted it when I couldn’t have it.”
Now as the helm of her own team, Lucy’s sights are on a podium place at the home Games.
She added: “To compete in the same county you grew up and live in is pretty cool.
“For all of us sailors it’s just a case of getting our heads down and continuing the work.
“Obviously we’re delighted to be selected but we want to win a medal at the Games, not just go to the Games.
“In match racing there’re easily eight really good teams and there’s very little room for error.
“You can’t really rack up the results to build a series on, you can take confidence from wins but one bad day and you can be out of the competition, it’s a bit more cut-throat in that sense.”
She added: “It feels like time is definitely flying by, it’s scary how quickly it’s going.
“When you start setting out our programme there doesn’t seem enough weeks in the year.
“But that makes it exciting as well.”
Encouraging young sailing talent
On Sunday, Lucy visited young sailors at the RYA Volvo Zone and Home Country Championships south zone event at the Weymouth and Portland National Sailing Academy to give encouragement to up-and-coming talent.
She said: “It’s an awesome event, it’s getting kids out of their own clubs to go racing but they don’t have to come too far.
“For a lot of them it’s a little insight into what they could do.
“This is such a great facility in the sense that on any given day you can get Olympic sailors going out on the same slipway as people who’ve turned up to sail for the first time.
“Everyone is using the same facilities and there aren’t many sports where you see that happen.”
The Match Race Girls will be training in Weymouth and Portland for the next couple of weeks, before competing at an event in France.
The trio then fly to Australia for the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) Worlds in Perth from December 3 to 19.
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