FRESH from winning gold at a world cup event Portland Paralympians are taking a well-earned rest before focusing their sights on Sail for Gold.

Alexandra Rickham and Niki Birrell, both of Easton, dominated the Skud-18 class and claimed first place with a day to spare at the ISAF Sailing World Cup event in Hyeres.

Their almost perfect scoresheet of nine race wins and a second helped take Skandia Team GBR’s medal tally to nine at the French Olympic Sailing Week.

Paralympian Niki, 24, who is currently visiting family and friends in Manchester, said: “We’re taking a couple of days off before we get back into training next week.

“We’ve got Sail for Gold coming up which is a massive event for us at the start of June so we’ll be working down in Weymouth and Portland with our excellent coach Marcus Lynch.

“Hyeres was a good event – we had predominantly light winds which were good conditions for us to work on. It was nice to have six boats out there – a few we’d never raced against before – and to win the regatta quite comfortably.”

Niki, who has cerebral palsy, began sailing in the able-bodied Mirror class with his brother Christian before switching to Paralympic sailing and teaming up with helm Alexandra Rickham, who is a C5/6 tetraplegic following a diving accident in Jamaica in 1995.

Skandia Team GBR stayed in an apartment block while competing in Hyeres and enjoyed the team atmosphere, plus go-karting for the Paralympic squad on the last day.

Niki, who shares a house on Portland with Sonar sailor Steve Thomas, said the camaraderie continued off the water and he had enjoyed rock climbing with a few of the team around the island as well as PlayStation games to help unwind after training.

He added: “I’m spending more and more time on Portland.

“Weymouth and Portland is one of the biggest sailing places in the world now – we’ve got all the facilities we need.”

For the two-time world champions, who came fifth at the last Paralympic sailing events in Beijing, the 2012 home Games is ‘definitely’ unfinished business.

Niki said: “Obviously for everyone who gets in the team it would be the biggest event of their sailing lives.

“It’s a huge event and it would be a big honour to compete in the Paralympics 2012 but it’s more important we actually win a medal. Personally I think we went to Beijing 2008 and massively under-performed, we’ve just got to try and be as prepared as we can be.

“As the games get closer the hype and excitement will increase, which is great but at this stage we’re just focusing on each event as it comes to get selection for next year.”

Niki revels in the level playing field that sailing provides and added: “The really nice thing about our sport is the Olympians and Paralympians are definitely one team, we have the same management, same support staff, physios and performance centre.

“I think all the Paralympic competitors are really grateful for that.

“Sailing is such a good sport because while in other sports it may be harder to get to the same level, in sailing I feel I can compete against the able-bodied guys.”