About Skandia Team GBR 

An introduction to Skandia Team GBR - the British Sailing Team in the Olympic and Paralympic Classes.

Skandia Team GBR is the British Sailing Team in the Olympic and Paralympic Classes.

Skandia Team GBR consists of three squads; 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, new for London 2012, Women's Olympic Classes 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 Olympic team sailors topping the medal table at the past three Games in 2000, 2004 and 2008.

Sailing is recognised today as one of the UK's most successful sports in terms of international medal returns and receives significant support from UK Sport through lottery funding as well as from many key sponsors and suppliers.

In the build up to an Olympics, the RYA nominates sailors to the British Olympic Association (BOA) for selection for Team GB for the forthcoming Games. If the BOA chooses to ratify those nominations they then officially invite the nominated athletes to become members of Team GB - the entire British Olympic team of all athletes from all sports - for that Olympic Games. Only once the nominations are ratified by the BOA are athletes officially selected for a Games. 

All other sailors not nominated for selection to the BOA for the Games continue to pursue their respective campaigns, training and developing as members of Skandia Team GBR.

The RYA also runs Pathway activities such as the RYA Volvo Youth Squad and National and Zone/Home Countries Junior squads, which aim to continuously feed into the Olympic Classes in order to continue or improve on the current level of success.