A silver medal at last year's Pan-Am Games in Winnipeg might have earmarked Sara Lane Wright as one to watch when the Europe Dinghy class sets sail in Sydney Harbour on Wednesday.

But the 31-year-old Bermudian will have none of it.

Pointing to her relative lack of experience compared to the rest of the fleet, she insists the trip Down Under is just another warm-up regatta towards her long-term goal, the 2004 Games in Athens.

Mention her name as a medal prospect and she laughs hysterically.

Yet the girls around her don't see the funny side.

That's because, despite her own doubts, events on the water over the past few weeks have been raising more than a few eyebrows.

For instance, when Wright accepted an offer to train with Atlanta bronze medallist Courtenay Dey, she beat up so badly on the American that within a few days the invitation was withdrawn.

The feisty blonde, who thrives on hard work -- she often spends as long as six hours out on the water during training -- then teamed up with an Australian training partner and the results were the same.

But Wright refuses to read anything into these preliminary performances, convinced her rivals have much more up their sleeves.

"My philosophy is still the same, my goal is Athens,'' she emphasises.

"I have to be realistic. I've achieved a lot this year but I've only had a year on the boat.

"These girls have been sailing this boat for about five years. Some of them for ten. You have to respect that.

"I've had a pretty good year. Things have gone really well here in Sydney.

But I think realistically this is just a stepping stone so I know what it's all about for the next Olympics.'' With coach/husband Brett at her side, Wright appears almost perplexed by her apparent ability to master the fluky conditions which are a feature of Sydney Harbour.

"Some days I have been beating everybody and I've just had to adjust because I don't quite understand it. These girls have been sailing so much longer than me, they must know so much more than me.

"There has to be something said for somebody who has been training 10 years, you have to respect that.'' Deep down, however, one senses that Wright, who only arrived at these Games as an Olympic Association wild card, believes she could be a dark horse.

"Anything's possible,'' she agreed. "At the Pan-Am Games I'd only been sailing such a short time and I won a silver. Here it's going to be much more difficult.

"The wind changes direction a lot. If the direction could be steady, I'd be really happy. Anything could happen, I could do well or I couldn't do well because it's very shifty and the race is never going to be over until you cross the finish line.

"All I want to do is sail well. When I've been practising and getting all the shifts upwind it's been a fantastic feeling, the boat just flies, everything feels right and everything I'm focusing on has been working.

"I think on any given day I could beat them. But everybody in the fleet thinks the same. This is a small fleet, only 26 boats. It's not like it's 100 boats where you have different levels of sailors who you've got to work through. Here they're all good. Nobody's intimidated by anybody else. We've all been training together.'' As for getting the better of American Dey, Wright refuses to read too much into those results.

"She hasn't looked like she has had as much boat speed as me. But she's very smart technically and she could be up there. You can't write her off.

"How can you predict. It's going to be a fight for the top three, a fight all the way to the end.

"The beauty of this course is that you can get a bad start and still recover because it's so shifty. I find the girls are playing the fleet and not the shifts.

"I've been playing the shifts, I've been on the left side and they've been on the right and I've come out ahead again and again from doing that.

"And that's what I'm going to stick with when the racing begins. But it's a risk, there'll be a lot of criticism at home at what the hell I'm doing if it doesn't work out.'' "I can just hear them now,'' she laughs. "Why the heck is Sara sailing out on the left and everybody else on the right.'' Unlike Bermuda's other two sailors at these Games, Peter Bromby and Lee White who flew in just a week ago, Wright moved to Sydney early in August and believes it was a decision that has paid off.

"I wish I could have arrived even another month earlier,'' she says.

"It's been really good. It's allowed me to put lots of time out on the water and try to figure out what's going on out there, how to sail in these conditions.

"No doubt, it's been really beneficial for me, although lots of sailors don't like to do that.

"Out of the 26 girls, probably 20 had sailed here in past two years in pre-Olympics, and I hadn't.'' "All I've been doing is playing catch-up.'' Sara Lane Wright: playing down her chances, but impressive performances in training indicate that Sydney Harbour conditions suit her.