Parents of talented young sailors will spend less to see their offspring turned into world-class performers after the RYA secured an extra £4.8 million over the next four years to develop youth sailing in Britain.

Until now the likes of Lymington's Ben Ainslie have had to rely on parental support to fund coaching, equipment and race expenses but as from this year, the burden will pass to the RYA, which is setting up six regional centres around the country to manage the new initiative.

An award of £4 million has been won from Sport England, the sports lottery body with an extra £200,000 a year provided by Volvo who already sponsor youth sailing in Britain as well as the round the world race, formerly The Whitbread.

The programme aims to identify around 800 juniors from 122 sailing clubs in England and through a well-defined programme of coaching and competitions, nurture the best of the bunch to qualify for the Volvo RYA Great Britain Youth Team, which will serve as a feeder for the top team international racing events such as the Olympics, America's Cup, Admirals' Cup and the Volvo Race.

A brand new network of High Performance managers and coaches has already been established in the six regional zones - including a southern region covering Hampshire and the Isle of Wight - and new zone talent squads are expected to start this autumn. The best from each zone will graduate to the National Junior Squad programme, featuring around 260 sailors aged 12-15 who will be targeted for special help from the High Performance Managers working closely with coaches and parents.

This award comes on top of the World Class Performance funding already secured by the RYA to raise the standards of British sailing for the Olympic Games. In the past three years, around £6 million has been spent on preparing a world class squad for the Sydney Games - allowing Ainslie, Shirley Robertson and Iain Percy among 40 others to focus exclusively on training and racing.

A target of three Olympic medals, a gold, silver and bronze, has been set by the RYA for 2000 and if the current squad exceeds this, a similar level of funding can be expected for the 2004 Games in Athens. But failure to meet the target will almost certainly see the support withdrawn.

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