Cowes Week video report

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OLYMPIC DREAM REALISED: Penny Clark.

LEE-ON-SOLENT'S Penny Clark works as a Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy, but this month she will be on the water for a different reason - Olympic gold.

Not only is the 32-year-old a high-flying member of the armed forces, she is also one of Britain's top female sailors.

She has been granted two-years' leave to pursue her dream of Olympic glory in the Laser Radial class in China.

Birmingham-born Clark said she would not have been able to compete at the Qingdao sailing resort if the Royal Navy had not been so helpful and understanding.

"It's been an amazing help for me," she said.

"I was working full-time when I took the decision to start sailing and trying to launch my Olympic campaign and I couldn't have done it without going full-time sailing.

"I've just been really, really lucky that they have allowed me to have two years off to pursue my ambition and hopefully they feel it's been justified in the fact that I have been selected and will be going to the Games."

Clark said she is hoping to get plenty of support from her colleagues in the Navy during the Games.

"I live in Lee-on-Solent and my naval base is just down the road at Gosport and I also sail locally out of Stokes Bay Sailing Club," she said.

"I'm hoping all the people from those various places will be flying the flag at home and following my progress and turning up to work very bleary-eyed and tired from watching it on the TV early that morning."

Going to the Olympics is the culmination of a dream Clark possessed ever since she first took to the water aged four.

"When I was sailing as a child back home in the West Midlands, I always dreamed of going to the Olympics," she said. "At that time there wasn't a women's class, but it's something I'd always look at, and look to other Olympians, and think that would be amazing to do.

"I guess it's just that dream that lives on in the back of your mind and if you're given a chance to realise your dream you've just got to grab it and put everything into it and make sure you try to achieve it."

In order to try and avoid too many nerves, Clark has decided not to attend the opening ceremony this Friday.

However, she said it will still be difficult to contain her emotions completely.

"I imagine it will start getting quite nervous and quite exciting when the realisation finally dawns that I am at the Olympics," she said.

"I've chosen not to go to the opening ceremonies, but hopefully there will be a buzz at the sailing centre that will enable me to get the feeling of being at the Olympics and use that to my advantage and raise my game."

In the build up to the Games, Clark has been receiving coaching from husband Russ.

She said it was a careful balancing act to manage the work/personal relationship, but they had made a good job of it.

"My husband's an international sailor himself and he had several qualities I felt were lacking in my own campaign, so I decided to put him in a Rib and get him to coach me and pick up on the areas I was weakest on," she said.

"It's been interesting with our relationship. We sat down very early on and drew up some ground rules, sat down with the Skandia Team GBR sport psychologist to try to come up with some terms that would make it work.

"It was all just pretty basic stuff really, like making sure we had a separation between sailing and coaching and home life, to the extent that I'd come home from sailing, we'd finish our debrief, I'd take my sailing kit off and put on a normal jumper that had no logos on it."

10:54am Wednesday 6th August 2008

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