WEYMOUTH Kitefoiler Lily Young says she is finally starting to feel like herself again on the water after battling back from a hand injury – and has set her sights firmly on earning Great Britain a coveted Olympic place at January’s World Championships in Brazil.
Young marked her comeback from an horrific training injury in December with an impressive top‑10 finish at the recent World Championships.
The accident, which severally damaged her hand and required plastic surgery, affected her ability to grip the bar and handle the huge loads that run through the lines in stronger winds, forced her to step back from full‑intensity training and racing while it healed.
She described it as a difficult period, having to watch rivals compete while she focused on rehab and carefully rebuilding strength and mobility.
Now, though, she says the hand is “doing good”, but admitted the disrupted build‑up made that result especially satisfying.
“I’m doing good now, back to racing,” she said. “I just finished the Worlds and I finished in 10th, so I was quite happy with that. Considering how I’ve been training, I’ll take that. Now I’m ready to get back to training and hopefully get some good results at the end of the year.”
The next phase of her campaign takes her to Los Angeles for a Grand Slam tour event this summer – a regatta that doubles as a crucial fact‑finding mission at the 2028 Olympic sailing venue. Young and her teammates made a short recce trip there last year, but this time they will spend the whole of July in California.
“We went last year for a short trip to do that initial check, you know, and it’s a super, super nice place,” she said. “There’s a really nice watersports community there, beautiful sailing clubs, and I think it’s going to be an amazing Olympics. The locations are really good, it’s a really nice spot for kiting and sailing.”
She joked that friends tell her she has chosen the perfect profession – “going to LA in July to go and surf” – but said there will be plenty of hard work behind the glamorous backdrop. This summer’s camp is all about turning that first look at the venue into a detailed playbook for 2028.
“This year it’s like we’re upping it a level,” she said. “We’ve done the initial check, and now it’s about beginning to learn the venue really well – learn the winds, learn the conditions out there and get a really good sort of map of what’s going on.”
Before any Olympic dreams can be realised in Los Angeles, however, Young and the rest of the British squad must clear a major hurdle early next year. January’s World Sailing Championships in Brazil will be the first opportunity to qualify a British kitefoil spot for the Games, and that regatta already looms large over her season.
“The next really important event is in January, which I know is a little way away, and that’s the first country qualifier for the Olympics,” she said. “It’s the first time we can qualify GBR a spot at the Olympics.”
Securing that nation place is the primary objective for Young and her teammates, even before internal selection battles begin.
“Europeans are important, but mainly yeah, mainly the Worlds in January in Brazil,” she said. “That’s the one that everyone wants – they want to qualify the nation first, get it out the way. It’s not an individual qualification, but you obviously need to qualify a GBR spot for any of us to even be chosen to go, so it’s quite important.”
With her hand healed, a top‑10 finish at the Worlds in the bank and a full summer of training and competition ahead, including the European Championships in September, Young now has a clear path: learn LA, deliver in Brazil and give herself the best possible chance of turning Weymouth training days into an Olympic start line in 2028.
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