For Tom Ramshaw, representing Canada in the Olympics is more than just a hard-won honour – it’s a secret dream come true.

“When I first started sailing as a kid, my coach told us to write down our goals,” the Finn class sailor says. “Mine was to go to the Olympics, but I didn’t want to say that because it was such a long shot. So I kept it to myself for a long time.”

Growing up in the Beaches, Ramshaw, the son of a keel boat sailor, spent his summers in the junior sailing program at Stony Lake Yacht Club and was racing two-person Laser rigs in regattas around southern Ontario by age 12.

In high school, as Ramshaw’s family moved to Moore Park, the young sailor moved on to single-handed races, training on the windy waters of Kingston, Ont. each summer and winning competitions like the Ontario Gold Cup in 2007.

After briefly pursuing engineering at Queen’s University after high school, Ramshaw’s passion for sailing drove him to leave school and commit to training full-time at the International Sailing Academy in Mexico.

Ramshaw sailed Laser professionally from 2010-2015, qualifying for the Canadian National Team in 2012 and competing in regattas around the world before making an abrupt switch to Finn class, a more technical and physical form of sailing than Laser, in August 2015.

Inspired by the challenge of learning a new form of sailing, Ramshaw entered the Finn North American Championship regatta after only three days of training, and won.

“It was a great fresh start,” he says, explaining that after years sailing the same class, the change, although intimidating, felt right.

After training throughout the winter, Ramshaw headed to the ISAF World Cup Miami in January 2016, where he secured the top Canadian spot as a newcomer, surprising his competitors.

“No one knew who I was,” he recalls with a grin. From there, he went on to finish 10th at the 2016 Finn European Championships in Barcelona and 8th in the Finn Gold Cup in Gaeta, Italy — unofficially cinching his Olympic qualification.

Three months later — and only nine months after switching from Laser — Ramshaw was selected to represent Canada at the Rio 2016 Olympics in Finn class sailing.

Now headed for the biggest regatta of his life, Ramshaw is currently down in Rio training with other top Finn sailors who are competing in the Olympics. He feels confident about his chances, believing the strategic skills learned from a lifetime of solo racing will give him an edge.

“Being in Laser for so long and competing against top sailors really helped prepare me,” he says, pointing out that that his rapid success in the last year has proved he has what it takes to earn the gold – which would be a Canadian first.

“Winning would mean so much,” he admits before saying that while his goal is gold, the feeling of achieving his lifelong ambition of being an Olympian is pretty thrilling on its own.

“Racing in the Olympics is the ultimate for any sailor,” he says. “It doesn’t get any better than that.”