HUNDREDS of British sailors gathered at The Venue hotel on Portland to get up to date with developments in the sailing world.

The annual World Class day was attended by 108 members of Skandia Team GBR, including the performance and development squads, coaches, support staff and team management.

Sailors and support crew spent the morning listening to talks from top industry professionals, including Dorset’s former 49er Olympic sailor turned Extreme 40 catamaran sailor Chris Draper and Olympic gold medallist rower Steve Williams about the value of lottery funding.

They then let off steam by designing and making high-performance kites in groups of eight to fly in a competition.

Communication manager for the team Lindsey Bell said: “We’re the biggest and best sailing team in the world and it doesn’t happen by accident.

“Days like these help bring that together so everyone knows the aims of what we’re trying to achieve as a team.

“The World Class day was about our strategy and vision for the coming year, thinking ahead to Rio as for most of the guys that’s what they’re now starting to focus on.

“We’re trying to keep all the sailors involved in 2012 as training partners or as much as they can be.

“We also talked about possible new equipment that may be brought in for 2016, thinking about what to plan for.

“Other topics included performance life style and how to juggle other parts of their lives, like full-time university, with sailing – plus career options for when sailors retire and an update on sport science.”

She added: “For the kite flying they were all given a bag of bits and they had to design, decorate and make their own kite.

“We only get together formally like this about once a year, the support staff and coaches meet a bit more often.

“It’s a good chance for the new guys who have come up from the youth squad to meet the Olympians and to do team building.”

The winning kite design team included Stevie Morrison, Steve Lovegrove, Charlotte Dobson, David Kohler, Katrina Hughes, Iain Percy, Alexandra Rickham and Claudia Carney.

Performance 49er sailor Dylan Fletcher, who is campaigning for selection for the 2012 Games with crewmate Alain Signs said the highlight of the day was flying their hand-built stunt kite.

He said: “We came second in the competition but got 10/10 for flying performance.”

Development sailor Richard Mason, who competes in the 470 Olympic classes with his help Ben Saxton said: “This was the result of the team building exercise on the World Class day.

“We had 45 minutes to design and build a kite from a few bits of balsa wood and polythene sheet.

“Our kite finished second overall, we lost marks for not decorating it well but it was by far the best in the air.”

You can view a video of the kite flying competition online at youtube.com