Olympic sailor Peter Bromby will be looking for a world title in a different class of sailing in the next week when he participates in a predominantly American team in the IMS World Championships in Newport, Rhode Island.

Bromby, who leaves today, will be on a 50-foot yacht which he has been sailing on for about three years. He will serve as skipper at the start of the race and also the team's tactician.

Racing will be held on Saturday and Sunday before Monday sees an overnight race over a 180-mile course. The boats return on Tuesday and race again on Wednesday in the final race of the championship.

Bromby will have only a couple of weeks back in Bermuda after that before he heads out again, this time for Sydney, Australia to test the waters -- literally -- ahead of the Olympic Games.

Bromby recently qualified for his third Olympics along with Star class crew Lee White, who will be accompanying him Down Under for two weeks of intensive training. It will be his first trip to Australia.

"That's the reason I want to go there to check out the conditions and also pave the way for everything I need,'' said Bromby.

"My boat got there on July 2 and it will be there waiting for me. I'll be training there with the Irish team that was just third in the World Championships. It's quite an intensive practice session that we have lined up.'' Bromby is taking a different approach to this Olympics than the one he adopted for Atlanta '96 when he spent three months in Savannah ahead of the Games.

From his experience he doesn't think it is necessarily the best approach.

"From a sports psychologist point of view, you go down there and keep hammering your head at it and by the time the event comes around it starts to feel like a chore,'' said the veteran sailor.

"I didn't find that that was particularly beneficial last time around when we spent almost three months living on the site.'' Both Bromby and White have made tremendous sacrifices to realise their dream of qualifying for another Olympics.

"We both have businesses to run and to try to run our businesses from Australia is not very easy to do,'' said Bromby who runs his own trucking firm.

"Imagine trying to do that when you have a 14-hour time difference. Whenever you're around to make a phone call everybody is in their bed at home.'' Bromby and White will leave for Australia a second time on September 9 with Star sailing starting almost two weeks later on September 23, a week after the Games open.

"What we're starving for is some time practising off the race course, spending some time fine tuning our techniques,'' said the skipper.

"That's what we'll be focusing our two week session on, our boat handling and fine tuning little pieces to make it go faster.'' Bromby says the first two-thirds of the sailing at the Olympics will be outside Sydney Harbour, which has its famous Sydney Opera House as a backdrop.

Sara Lane Wright will continue her Olympic preparations when she competes in the Europe Dinghy European Championships this week.

Wright, who was awarded a wildcard entry for the Europe Dinghy competition in Sydney, is competing against some of the world's best in the regatta in Murcia, Spain.

Sailing at the same venue, Wright placed 35th in a fleet of 170 in a four-day regatta which ended on Sunday.

In qualifying competition over the first three days, she recorded a series of 18-15-41-6-16-28, which earned her a place in the gold fleet for the final two races, in which she finished 27th and 19th.

The winner was two-time world champion Soren Jonsson, of Denmark, who beat Margarite Matthijse of the Netherlands into second place.

In light-to-medium conditions, Wright was competing in a chartered boat, as her own is already en route to Sydney.

Wright, who has put her career on hold to concentrate on the Olympics, will also head for Australia well in advance of the Games. She will fly to Sydney on Sunday, August 6 for a solid month of training with Courtney Becker-Day, the American Europe Dinghy Olympic entrant, and her husband/coach.

Olympic team: Peter Bromby and Lee White in action.