You have to whisper it around the Bermuda sailing camp but there is a growing confidence surrounding Adriana Penruddocke’s chances of securing the island a valuable Olympics spot at the Pan America Games in Chile.

With the United States and Canada having already secured spots at Paris 2024, Penruddocke needs only to come out on top of the other countries in the North American region to qualify Bermuda for the Olympics.

It is all coming quickly for Penruddocke, who is focusing primarily on the 2028 Olympics but this regatta at her first major Games may end up being more than a learning experience for her.

“It’s definitely different for me as I have never been at a Games like this,” she said.

“I’m definitely excited to see if I can put my best foot forward and see what I can achieve. I’ll do my best and see what happens. I’m always learning but will try to put my peak performance out there.

“It’s a massive jump to this level. The elite sailors on the Olympic circuit are always there and to compete you have to always be on your A game. As a junior you get a bit more leniency because everybody is in school, whereas the elite have none of that and are constantly training.

“There are people at this regatta who are ten years older, have had two or three Olympic cycles behind them, are very experienced and they know how everything runs. But even in the previous Worlds when you beat some of them in a race, it’s pretty cool to see that hard work paying off.”

Penruddocke has brought coach Shaun Priestley to Santiago in an attempt to maximise her chances and he watches closely from an accompanying boat at every training session. Their relationship is an important one.

“It’s really important to have Shaun out here with me,” Penruddocke said.

“It’s important to keep to our processes and he reminds me to deal with the controllables. He is great with feedback and helps to keep me focused.

The 23-year-old has already had to cope with one setback as her mast is still somewhere in the depths of Heathrow airport in London and she has been forced to use an unfamiliar one in Santiago.

“I have the mast tagged and it is still showing as being somewhere in Heathrow,” she said.

“It wasn’t ideal but we managed to locate a similar one out here and we have trained with it a couple of times and it seems fine, which is a bit of relief.”

Penruddocke is scheduled to start her Pan American Games campaign on Saturday afternoon weather permitting and she is hoping that the wind is as strong as possible.

“Strong winds really suit me,” she said. “If the wind is up then I can do my own thing, go out and attack from the start.”