Nova Scotia sailors team up for 2020 Olympic Games bid

Former sailing competitors Allie Surrette of St. Margarets Bay and Max Flinn of Chester are teaming up in the hope of taking a new high-performance, multi-hulled sailboat to the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Both have sailed in international regattas and this year, they'll combine their skills on a Nacra 17.

"It's a great challenge to go out there everyday and figure it out," said Flinn. "Allie and I are tackling it full on and loving every second of it."

The Nacra 17 is not your basic sailboat. As boat speed increases, wing-like foils mounted under the hulls lift the boat out of the water so it looks like it is flying at high speed.

Next week, the Surrette-Flinn team will be heading to Oakcliff, N.Y., for one of their first big international tests in the division.

"We're expecting there will be six to eight boats there so we'll get to show what we've been working on all summer long," said Surrette, a student at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. "We are really excited for it."

Surrette and Flinn, both 22, have raised $60,000 this year through corporate sponsors and fundraising.

Most of that money will be used to buy a new boat which they will be picking up in the U.S. following the race in New York. Their current training boat is being loaned to them.

The Nacra 17 division will be a mixed event in the next Olympic Games set for Tokyo in 2020.

That means the crew must have one woman and one man. Most teams will have a male driver, but not the Nova Scotia crew, which will be led by Surrette.

"I'm a really big advocate for girls in sport and leadership," she said. "It's really empowering."

Making it to the Olympic Games is the team's top goal and they will have their first chance to qualify for the games at an event in New Zealand early in 2019.

In 2016, Surrette, with a teammate from Ontario, qualified a boat for the Olympics but she didn't get to participate in the games in Brazil.

That decision still evokes some bitter memories.

"Unfortunately, Sail Canada decided not to send a boat and gave that spot away to Italy," Surrette said.

"I was pretty devastated after that and took some time off from the sport, but now I'm back and I'm committed more than ever to make it to the Olympics with Max."

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