LONDON 2012 silver medallist Hannah Mills says this week’s 470 World Championships in Israel will be a “massive event” as nations and sailors vie for Rio 2016 Olympic Games berths.

For both Portland-based Mills, sailing partner Saskia Clark and their team-mates in the 470 Men’s class, Luke Patience and Elliot Willis, the Olympic selection battle is over, with both crews having already confirmed their places on the startline for Great Britain next year.

But with country quota places and individual qualifying spots still up for grabs among the worldwide fleet, Cardiff-born Mills is expecting a tough battle as they compete for the world title alongside 42 other female crews in Haifa.

“There’s certainly a lot of chat about countries getting qualified for the Games so it’s a massive event for a lot of people, both for country qualification and for individual selection places as well,” the 27-year-old explained.

“It’s certainly a big event and everyone’s looking to peak for this event throughout the year.

“We’ll definitely need to be on our best game to be in with a shout of the medals.”

Mills continued: “Our selection maybe lets a teeny bit of pressure off for this event now, but for us we’re looking at it as the last big event for our 2015 season so we still want to go out and put on our best performance. “It’s still a World Championship and you don’t get the chance to try and get on the podium or win them very often. We’ll certainly be going out there with that in our minds.”

Weymouth-based Clark added: “Because of the logistics of getting here, some of the smaller nations haven’t come like they would come to maybe a more central European venue, but all the teams we see as our main competitors for next year are here so from that perspective (the focus) doesn’t change that much.

“It’s important for us – you want to race against them and race against the best and keep improving your skills and that’s what we’ll be focussed on.”

The British Sailing Team duo won the world title in 2012 and earned a bronze medal at the 2014 championships in Santander.

“It would be fair to say we didn’t feel anywhere near our best last year at Santander,” Clark explained. “We were still a bit rusty from the time we took out following the Games and hadn’t quite got into our rhythm yet for this cycle.

“That’s definitely not the case now. We’ve had a great year training and racing since Santander and, touch wood, we’ve been injury free which had been a bit of a problem in the past.”

Joining Mills and Clark in the women’s fleet will be Eilidh McIntyre, sailing with Jess Lavery, plus Podium Potential squad pairing Amy Seabright and Anna Carpenter.

The men’s event will see 63 teams from 33 nations battling it out for the world title.

Racing at the 470 World Championships gets underway today with the final medal races for the top 10 crews scheduled for Saturday.

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