Sam Sills: No Olympic pressure pleases Team GB windsurfer

Team GB windsurfer Sam Sills says he is happy not to have the pressure of Olympic qualification ahead of the World Championships this month.

Cornwall's Sills, 30, has already been selected to represent Team GB in the iQFOil class this summer.

He will race in the World Championships in Lanzarote later this month as part of his Paris 2024 preparations.

"It's a bit of a weird balance because we're already looking at the Olympics and trying to peak for that," he said.

"So I'm not really ready for this event and a lot of my big competitors are peaking," he told BBC Radio Cornwall.

"It's an odd place to be, but we hope that in the long run that's a good plan to be building up from now and be peaking in the summer."

Paris 2024 will be Sills' first Olympic Games after more than a decade of trying to reach the pinnacle of his sport.

Sills failed to make the Great Britain team for the 2016 and 2020 Olympics on the old RS:X style boards and instead went off to work as a naval architect.

But after the iQFOil class was introduced for Paris 2024, he returned to the sport and has made rapid progress.

The iQFOil boards use hydrofoils attached to the bottom of the board to lift it out of the water, with speeds of up to 30 knots (about 35mph/55kph).

Sills hopes not having qualification pressure will help him and his team get his equipment perfect for the seas off Marseille in southern France later this summer, where the 2024 Olympic sailing events will take place.

"When you're trying to perform all the time you can't diverge that much," he explained.

"In windsurfing the settings are really critical and you only need your hydrofoils to be 0.2 of a degree different and it will be a completely different performance.

"So you really don't get that much opportunity to play around and set things out, so it's quite special to be able to do that now and really find the edges of what works and what doesn't work and hopefully be able to put it together in the summer in Marseille."

Sills has been in Lanzarote since before Christmas as he puts in the hours of winter training to form the foundations for his Olympic year.

"When the news came out and I finally got there it was pretty surreal," Sills says of his Olympic selection.

"My life hasn't changed that much, I've still got the same goal, I still haven't done it yet. I've still got to get there, still got to get across the start line and the finish line.

"There's quite a big shift in terms of support, once you're selected you do have access that everything that Team GB can throw at you and that's been amazing.

"It was quite overwhelming really when the news came out. I had an inbox of probably a couple of thousand. I don't know if I've managed to reply to everyone, it was a bit of an explosion, but it was very special.

"But it hasn't changed that much, you've still got to do the work every day, it doesn't get any easier."