Luke Patience: My sailing partner has cancer. I’ll race at Olympics for him

Determined: 2012 silver medallist Luke Patience
David Churchill11 August 2016

Sailor Luke Patience has said he will be racing in Rio 2016 for his former dinghy partner Elliot Willis, who had to pull out of the Team GB squad after being diagnosed with bowel cancer.

Patience, 29, paired up with Chris Grube for the men’s 470 competition following Willis’s diagnosis in December.

Patience, who won silver at London 2012, told the Standard: “The three of us are going to do this. What me and Elliot started, me and Chris are finishing. It’s been pretty emotional for all of us.”

He said the change means he and Grube — who had their first races yesterday — have now had to “cram a four-year programme” into less than a year.

“Me and have Chris forged a team together in nine months and tried to keep this goal the same and keep the dream alive during a tough time for Elliot, and it is still very much alive. Me and Chris have been hell-bent and pushing forward.”

He said it was disappointing that Willis, 32, will not make it to Rio but that his old sailing partner is continuing his recovery plan after radiotherapy and is “looking great at the minute”.

Patience, who grew up in Aberdeen and now lives in Tyrie, north Aberdeenshire, remembers being “pushed” into a boat aged seven by his father and immediately “catching the bug”.

He said: “It was the freedom of it, there were no lines in the water or restrictions on what you could do, just me and the boat trying to find this harmony.”

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