A team of sailors has recently launched their campaign to be in the Rio Olympic squad in 2016.

In their Catamaran, Tom Phipps and Zennor Pascoe have already started training in the Carrick Roads. Both born and bred in Cornwall, Tom grew up in Mylor Harbour, one of the best water sport areas in the UK and is from a family with a sailing school business, and Zennor started sailing professionally at 17.

Tom has been in this position before, in the build up to the 2012 Olympic games, but his class was dropped from the 2012 line up, putting an end to that bid.

Tom told Roseland Online, “The re-introduction of the Catamaran to the 2016 cycle timed well with my graduation from university. I spent the last year crewing for previous Olympian, Lucy MacGregor, and I’ve now switched to helm and teamed up with fellow Cornish sailor Zennor Pascoe.”

With over 40,000 nm miles logged, a transatlantic and regattas on every continent bar the Antarctic and South America, Zennor has proven her commitment, tenacity and skill for this task.

Zennor added, “In the few training sessions we have already done, I am adapting to the boat incredibly quickly. I’m confident it won’t be long before I am at fully-fledged Olympic crew level.”

Roseland Online readers with be delight to know that Tom and Zennor have agreed to write a new monthly feature especially for us, The Wake to Rio, plotting their hopes, dreams, trials and tribulations along the way, so we can follow them over the next 978 days to their goal.

The new monthly feature will start in January and we’ll give you another update on this over the Christmas period.