SKANDIA Team GBR is the British Sailing Team in the Olympic and Paralympic classes.

The team consists of 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, 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 2000, 2004 and 2008 Games.

In a Dorset Echo column, Skandia Team GBR members are bringing insight into the campaign for glory in 2012.

Here’s Portland’s Stuart Bithell, who sails the 470 men’s event with helm Luke Patience and is a member of Team Sperry:

MYSELF and Luke have been in Weymouth and Portland for the last few weeks, training hard on and off the water.

Morgan Reece our coach from the USA has been over with some refreshing ideas on how we can make a 470 go faster.

Last weekend we sailed the final races of a national ranking spring series and came away with lots of venue specific information and a first place overall.

Our new boat arrives from Auckland next week and we will be getting her ready for the sail for gold regatta in June.

We plan to do lots of training again in the next few weeks with our training partners Ben Saxton and Richard Mason, and also old team mates/ main rivals Nic Asher/Elliot Willis and Nick Rogers/Chris Grube.

It’s so good to see the squad coming together again to better our chances of success in August.

The team managed a team building day at Purbeck shooting school, needless to say I was awesome and Luke struggled.

I’m was off back to my roots last weekend with a Merlin Rocket open meeting on Hayling Island – I was very excited to get the tiller back in my hand.

We are hoping the rain stops and temperature rises a little soon in the Weymouth Bay area.

For now that’s all, thanks.