A Sevenoaks school pupil will pit her wits against more than 250 of the continent's best young sailors after being selected to represent Great Britain.

Cossie Lewis booked her place in the eight-strong British team for July's Magic Marine Optimist European Championships after impressing at the selection trails in 2012.

The Optimist junior sailing class is widely regarded as the breeding ground for future international sailing success with four-time Olympic champion Sir Ben Ainslie a former Optimist sailor.

The championships get underway on Friday, July 17, with a total of five days of racing before the prizes are presented on Thursday, July 23.Some 255 sailors from 37 nations, including from outside Europe, will be racing on Cardigan Bay.

Cossie, 13, who competes for both the Sevenoaks School Sailing Club and Bosham SC in West Sussex, admits she can’t wait to get to Pwllheli in North Wales, where the championships will be held.

She said:“The Europeans is the biggest event I have been selected for to date. After last year's Nationals I sat down with my coach, Matt Rainback, and discussed my goal, which was to get to the European Championships. All my racing and training during the last few months was focussed towards this goal, so I was thrilled to achieve it!

"I am really looking forward to the event, particularly sailing against such tough international competition. I’m still working out my goal, however ideally it would be to get into Gold fleet, which is the top third of all boats for the final series.”

Cossie has previously been selected for British teams to compete in major Optimist regattas in Braassemermeer in The Netherlands (2014 and 2015), while she says her best recent achievement was coming 30th out of 538 competitors at the International Palamos Optimist Trophy regatta in Spain in February.

This will be the first time in the Championship’s official 32-year history that the Optimist Europeans will be held in Great Britain, and only the second time the event has been hosted on UK waters since Belfast in 1993.

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