Sailors Vita Heathcote and Chris Grube will compete for Team GB in the mixed dinghy class at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, the British Olympic Association has announced.
Heathcote will be the youngest sailor in the Team GB line-up aged just 22, while Grube, 39, will make his third appearance for Team GB having competed at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 with Luke Patience.
The pair only joined forces eight months ago, but last month, they scooped a silver medal at the 470 class World Championship in Palma, Mallorca, securing a quota place for Team GB and earning themselves athlete selection.
Heathcote, from Lymington, Hants, is a rising star of the British Sailing Team, joining in 2020 at the age of 18.
She was world champion in the 420 class, the youth version of the 470, the previous year and has since scooped a European bronze medal as well as the recent World Championship silver.
The Olympic legacy also runs strong in Heathcote’s family – her uncle is three-time Olympic sailor Nick Rogers, who won silver medals in the 470 class at Athens and Beijing.
“It gives me goosebumps knowing that I’m going to be a part of the biggest sporting spectacle on earth,” said Heathcote.
“The Olympics has always been the goal and the thing I project my inspiration and motivation towards, so selection is a box ticked on the way there.
“I feel like now I can really sink my teeth into that event and the progress up to it - it is a very freeing and unique sensation.”
Heathcote will have big shoes to fill, picking up the mantle from Tokyo 2020 gold medallists Hannah Mills and Eilidh McIntyre.
The GB sailors selected for Paris 2024 are:
- John Gimson and Anna Burnet – Mixed Multihull (Nacra 17)
- James Peters and Fynn Sterritt – Men’s Skiff (49er)
- Freya Black and Saskia Tidey – Women’s Skiff (49erFX)
- Emma Wilson – Women’s Windsurfing (iQFOiL)
- Sam Sills – Men’s Windsurfing (iQFOiL)
- Ellie Aldridge – Women’s Kite (Formula Kite)
- Michael Beckett – Men’s Dinghy (ILCA 7)
- Hannah Snellgrove – Women’s Dinghy (ILCA 6)
- Vita Heathcote and Chris Grube – Mixed Dinghy (470)