Weymouth's Patience ready to reveal Rio crew (From Dorset Echo)

Weymouth's Patience ready to reveal Rio crew

4:30pm Thursday 28th February 2013 in Sport By Laura Kitching

A SPECIAL announcement will be taking place at the RYA Dinghy Show this weekend.

Weymouth’s Olympic silver medallist Luke Patience, who split from his 2012 teammate Stuart Bithell at the end of last year, will be revealing his new crew with whom he’s aiming for Rio 2016 gold.

The new pairing, who will be campaigning to represent Great Britain in the men’s 470 dinghy class at the next Games, will come under the spotlight at the show at Alexandra Palace on Sunday morning.

Other Olympians making an appearance at the show include Dorset’s former Match Race Girls Kate Macgregor and Annie Lush.

The London 2012 Match Race Girls, together with Skandia Team GBR sailors Nick Thompson and Dylan Fletcher, will officially open the show on Saturday at 10am before taking part in main stage talks, leading coaching sessions, presenting prizes, signing autographs and trying their hand at some of the show’s interactive activities.

Rising 49er star Fletcher and Macgregor, who has opted to sail the new 49erFX women’s skiff for the Rio 2016 cycle, will be sharing their trapezing knowledge in the coaching area at 2pm.

On Sunday, Portland’s Paralympic gold medallist Helena Lucas, double Olympic silver medallist Joe Glanfield and Olympian Lucy Macgregor will be joining Patience at the show.

In the coaching area, Lucy Macgregor and Glanfield will offer their trapezing tips, while Lucas will be giving her best advice for getting a good race start at 3pm.

Lucas will also help to launch the RYA’s Push the Boat Out Weekender event at 11.30am on the RYA stand.

While Patience, 26, remains tight-lipped about his new crew’s identity he has revealed some answers to some cheeky questions from the Dorset Echo to keep us guessing...

Tall or short? Crews are always taller and everyone’s taller than me, I’m the smallest man in the world.

Fun or serious? They’ve definitely got a bit of fun about them.

Well known? Yes.

Scottish? No.

Older or younger? Older than me.

An Olympic medallist? I can’t say, you’re grilling me!

What makes you two a good pairing? Well I think in a similar breath to the fact that me and Stu had a good make up because we had different strengths and weaknesses, it’s a similar thing with the new chap. We’re good at different things in the sport and we kind of complement each other.

Once the announcement is made Patience and his crew will begin the hunt for sponsors to support their world-class campaign in the build up to 2016.

* Follow patience_luke on Twitter. To find out more about the RYA Dinghy Show visit www.dinghyshow.org.uk