SKANDIA Team GBR is the British Sailing Team in the Olympic and Paralympic classes.

The team consists of the Performance Squad and Development and Transitional squads, which jointly total around 70 sailors.

The sailors train and compete across 10 Olympic Classes - Finn, Laser Radial, Laser, 470 men and women, 49er, Star, NeilPryde RS:X men and women windsurfers and women’s match racing.

There are three Paralympic Classes, the Sonar, 2.4mR and SKUD18.

Great Britain is the world’s top Olympic Classes sailing nation with the British sailors topping the medal table at the past three Games in 2000, 2004 and 2008.

In a weekly Dorset Echo column, Skandia Team GBR members are bringing insight into the campaign for glory in 2012.

Here’s RYA Olympic manager Stephen Park.

IT’S BEEN a hectic week but an exciting one in our countdown and preparations towards 2012 as we officially selected the first members of the team that will fly the flag for us in Weymouth and Portland next year.

We’ve selected 11 of the potential 16 Olympic team sailors this week, and in them we have a good mix of experience and first-time Olympians, which is a good place to be for us.

It provides us with the opportunity of putting age and experience onto some of the less experienced heads, but equally for some new blood to come in to suggest new ideas to think about doing in a different way, and not just be satisfied with how we’ve done things in the past.

Also, looking further down the track, it’s always good to have some turnover as that stands us in good stead for the next one or two Olympic cycles that are coming along, just to have a broader range of Olympians and of broader ages so we’re not relying on the same sailors all the time, who at some stage are going to move on and do something different.

Last Tuesday saw the official team selection announcement with a big press conference at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.

As we get closer and closer through 2012 there’s no doubt that the media interest is going to heighten and all the media that attended the announcement are already pointing out the expectation that is on sailing to deliver medals as part of Team GB, and that’s on each of those individual sailors in terms of doing their part to deliver medals for themselves, the country and also recognising the efforts of competing for the people that they’ve beaten to get that slot.

Certainly the hardest part of my job is having to make those phone calls to those people that have not made it to be part of the Olympic team.

I’ve just got so much respect for those sailors, which is probably why it’s such a struggle for me to make the phone calls because I recognise the amount of effort, the amount of sacrifice that they put into their campaigns.

So many of them are top sailors, who if they were sailing for any other nation, would be our main competitors.

It’s at times like this I’m always disappointed that sailing doesn’t run a bit of a transfer market because I think we could do quite well out of it financially!

On a more serious note, it’s always difficult telling somebody that the next chance they’ve got to go to the Olympic Games is going to be in five year’s time.

It’s a long wait for someone who’s put in so much effort and so much application and who delivered such fantastic results through the course of the year but were just not quite good enough for them to be the selected representative.

Read more at rya.org.uk/skandiateamgbr