Zander Kirkland is going all out to make next year?s Olympics.

The Island Laser skipper is putting schoolwork to one side for a term to concentrate all his efforts on earning his ticket to Greece.

Kirkland, seventh at college sailing?s recent North American Singlehanded Championships, needs to finish in the top 40 countries in the world at next year?s world championships to make the grade for Athens.

He is currently in Italy and so left his father to explain why he has decided on this tack.

?He did well in Europe this summer,? said Malcolm Kirkland. ?And you have to understand that in the States Zander and the others are mostly in their 20s and the average age (in Europe) is 25.

?He qualified for Gold Fleet in Kiel, Germany which is a major deal. So, I think, based on his performances and results this summer he thought that he had been competitive over 12 months.?

At this year?s worlds Kirkland had four top ten finishes and he also performed more than admirably at the Pan American Games.

He is now setting out on an intensive training programme which will take him right up to the Worlds.

In January Kirkland will coach a number of the Island?s radial sailors at the Orange Bowl in the US. From there he will return to Bermuda where he will hook up with Dan Holman, a member of the British national team, for eight days.

?Then in the middle of January he is going to do the Argentinian Olympic Trials to which the Brazilians go, former world champions, so the standard is good,? said Kirkland senior. ?Then he is going to do the Brazilian Nationals before coming back here for some more training.?

In March he heads to France for what his father described as ?a Laser boot camp?.

?Then the plan is for (Argentine coach) Dino Weber to plug in, based on what his strengths and weaknesses are at the time, and train him through the May World Championships in Turkey,? he said.

?There, he has to finish in the top 40 countries.?

Part of the programme involves a weight gain campaign undertaken at Tufts University in Massachusetts where Kirkland is studying.

?He is on a weight programme to get up to 178lbs from 168lbs,? Kirkland said. ?It is kind of upper body weight.?

Asked for what he and his son thought of his chances of matching the standards for the Olympics, Kirkland senior said that so long as he didn?t fall victim to a Turkish bug they were ?quite hopeful?.

?He is very positive,? he said. ?He has approached this via a strategic planning process ? what am I strong at, what am I weak at, what can I improve on?

?For two years he worked on downwind speed and the results were seen in Santo Domingo (Pan Ams). The next step is to gain speed upwind by being bigger. Also, having Dino there to manage him will be good because it?s tough alone.

?It?s hard to describe but it?s not like a ten second race, it?s like a campaign composed of a series of battles.?

As for the recently completed collegiate championships, Kirkland told the by email that he had had two and a half great days.

?It was a painful final afternoon. It was very light, one to four knots,? he wrote. ?I had been in a great flow the first ten races in four to eight.

?In the last five, I fell into taking greater risks. It was like gambling. I had been well positioned in the top five but lost it and to do 720s (penalty turns) and the like. It was a mental thing,? he wrote, pointing out that he was the only sailor there without a coach.