Sailing: Helena chases a golden future after silver show

An unexpected trip to China has opened the door just enough for another of Britain's seemingly unend-ing supply of talented sailors on the road to Olympic Games glory in 2012. Helena Lucas is a sailor. Not a woman sailor, not a Paralympic sailor, though she qualifies. Just a seat-of-the-pants, fiercely competitive sailor. And a good one.

The 31-year old has been operating at national level since she was 12. Crawley Mariners Sailing Club was her unlikely launchpad, where she beat her parents in her first race, and she is on course to go back to China for the 2008 Paralympic Games. But she found herself last month being offered the berth usually occupied by the double gold medallist Shirley Robertson at the helm of an Yngling, the women's three-crew keelboat, at the first major 2008 Games test at Qingdao.

With Robertson on mat-ernity leave with her twins, Lucas had just four days to settle in with the crew, Annie Lush and Lucy MacGregor. They took silver.

Lucas still wants Paralympic gold in China in the 2.4m single-hander, but a dream she had consigned to the wannabe dustbin had been revived. Despite being introduced to the sport by her Reigate-based parents at eight, hating it and then embracing it after a flotilla holiday in Greece, her determination to acquire an engineering degree delayed her first proper Olympic attempt until the run-up to Sydney 2000.

That was in a 470 dinghy, but the gurus at the Royal Yachting Association dec-ided she could switch her talents to the Paralympic circuit, where she is one of very few women competing on equal terms with men. In effect, she was shutting a door on her Olympic ambitions. "Now, maybe there is a chance to go back," she says. "Not for 2008, but certainly for 2012."

If a competitive streak is the criterion, there is no shortage. "I'm sometimes asked at the gym if I have a sleeping bag," she says, though she denies being obsessive about her fitness programme. In addition, she throws herself fearlessly at black grade downhill ski runs. "I think I am quite brave, but my parents says I am crazy," she says. Not that she sees herself as anything other than encouraging other women or disabled people to have a go.

But she acknowledges admiration for Ellen Mac-Arthur from the time both were working at Bowman Yachts, she in the design office, Ellen on the shop floor. "There were times when I looked at her and thought, if I were her, I would give up. But I learnt that, if you really want something, you never give up."