Multiple World Match Racing Tour (WMRT) champion Peter Gilmour has joined the chorus of those calling for local sailing to be granted national sports status.As one of the Island’s oldest sports, sailing, according to locals, is just as deserving of all the perks that come with national sports status of which football and cricket currently enjoy.And past Americas Cup skipper Gilmour agrees.“I think it would be absolutely justified. Sailing is a sport that certainly deserves some level of community support and I’d be a huge advocate of it,” he told The Royal Gazette.Gilmour believes as a national sport, it would not only attract more people to sailing but perhaps more importantly help raise local standards. And this, he stressed, would bode well for the Island’s sailors when they compete internationally.“If you look back in the pre-professional era of the Olympics, Bermuda had a great standing competing in the amateur level of the Olympics Games,” he added.“Then in the 1980s the Olympics suddenly became highly professional and focused and made it very difficult for a small nation like Bermuda to compete at that level when countries like Australia are putting ten million (dollars) into their teams.”Echoing Gilmour’s sentiments was Bermuda Sailing Association (BSA) president Tim Patton.The veteran Etchells sailor also wants to see sailing become a national sport and receive the recognition he says it deserves.He feels national sports status would go some way towards helping various agencies such as the Waterwise programme, Bermuda Sloop Foundation and the Department of Youth and Sports pull together for a common cause.Patton said some of the funding that football and cricket get could be channelled into the Waterwise programmne (for Middle School students) that continues to produce well-rounded sailors.“We now have the most amazing group of kids emerging and one of the great feeders to this is the Waterwise programme,” he said.“The talent we have managed to get from the Waterwise is amazing.“We are getting kids coming out of the Middle Schools who are absolute stars and have talent and we need to nurture that talent.“At the moment we are in the strongest building phase we’ve been in probably 10 or 15 years and the level of Optimist racing is high.”Some of the participants in this week’s RenaissanceRe Junior Gold Cup were once involved in the Waterwise programme.The Junior Gold Cup is held in conjunction with the Argo Group Gold Cup which affords youth sailors with the opportunity to mingle with some of the sailing idols on the WMRT.“I think it is really important to have a junior event like this,” said three-time King Edward VII Gold Cup winner Gilmour. “It gives the kids some really great athletes to look up to.“I saw one of the Optimist sailors wearing Ben Ainslie’s Team Origin shirt and he obviously gave him that after winning last year.”