Year 11 student, Jessica Nelson, has been selected to be part of the GB Youth Squad.  GB Youth Sailing Squad is designed to enable the best British sailors, with the potential for World Class performance, to develop their racing skills so they can succeed on the international stage and have the best prospects of willing medals at World and European Championships and of successfully following an Olympic pathway.

 

The selection was based on Jess’s and her sailing partner Hannah’s (Monmouth School) performance at the RYA Youth National Championships, their development over the winter and the successful physiology profiling which is a grueling test of strength and fitness taken by all sailors sailing an Olympic pathway boat.

 

Since September last year, Jess has been attending Stamford School gym twice a week, under the coaching of Stamford School’s strength and conditioning personal trainer, James, to help prepare her for the profiling.   Jess said ‘my fitness and strength has increased significantly due to the support and training received from the school which has helped me achieve one of my goals.  The first real benchmark that all the work in the gym has helped came when I did the Burghley run and came 6^th and previously my best had been 30^th.  In the recent profiling in Scotland, I pushed all the upper boundaries expected from a GB Squad Sailor which I believed helped in my selection for the squad.   I will now be training with future GB Olympians which is very exciting.  I am also very grateful to my previous Stamford School sailing partners, Tom Proffitt who introduced me to competitive sailing and James Leetch who first taught me how to sail the 29er”.

In the picture above the girls were nearly taken out by a friend in another boat on the racecourse, but managed to take evasive action and sailed away, but it made the RYA Youth National facebook cover.  Jess is the one standing on the edge of the boat. The annual RYA Youth National Championships is the UK’s premier youth racing event which took place over Easter. This year’s regatta took place in Largs, Scotland, and featured around 245 young sailors aged between 14 and 21.

 

This weekend the girls got a 3^rd Place in the Welsh National Championships and are looking forward to training and competing in Helsinki in the summer.