SHANDON sailor Anna Burnet says she's revelling in the opportunity for a second shot at Olympic gold alongside partner John Gimson after the pair were selected to represent Team GB at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

The Nacra 17 duo bagged Olympic silver on the waters of Enoshima together and qualified for 2024 with the same colour at August's Sailing World Championships in The Hague.

With markedly different conditions expected in Marseille, Gimson, 40, and 31-year-old Burnet are doing all they can to go one step further.

Burnet, a former Lomond School pupil, said: “We just knew we really needed to qualify at the World Championships. It was a big feeling of relief.

“The actual venue in Marseille is a completely different sailing venue to Enoshima at the Tokyo Games.

“That presents a lot of different challenges that will favour a different style of sailing and different strengths and weaknesses will come into play.

“We’re both just really looking forward to the honour of having another opportunity of competing at another Olympic Games, something we’ve both dreamt about since we were kids."

In September Burnet and Gimson managed a record-breaking feat when they sailed from Ballyholme, near Belfast, to Portpatrick on the south-west tip of Scotland in one hour and 30 minutes on their Nacra 17 boat.

They worked with double Olympic champion and coach Iain Percy, CEO of Artemis Technologies, to issue a wake-up call and promote decarbonisation of the maritime industry.

Now, as part of their intense preparations over the next nine months, the pair will continue to train alongside Italian partnership Ruggero Tita and Caterina Banti – the same duo who beat Britain’s Nacra 17 best to gold at Tokyo 2020.

Burnet admitted the dynamic may seem peculiar to outsiders, but says she's sure their method will bear fruit when the time comes to compete in Marseille.

“We train well on the water together,” she said.

“We’re always pushing each other, and then off the water it’s always friendly. We happily go to dinner together.

“We’ll race them at the Olympics and we’ll both race them as hard as we can, it’s a very good relationship.

“They know our strengths and weaknesses quite well and we know theirs.

“From the outside it probably looks like a strange dynamic that we train together as the gold and the silver medallists from last time but it’s the best way for us to push forward together."

Long before then, Burnet and Gimson are hoping for awards success off the water at the Scottish Sports Awards in Glasgow this Thursday (December 7). 

The pair have been nominated for the Sustainability in Scottish Sport award, and are up against Aberfeldy Middle Distance Triathlon and Scottish Student Sport at the ceremony, taking place at the Glasgow Science Centre.

Find out more about Burnet and Gimson's Olympic glory bid on the British Sailing Team page at the RYA's website.