Tauranga's Andrew Roy expects to be out of his depth when he heads across the ditch to train with some of Aussie's top kayakers.

But he's hoping the experience will help him improve faster as he attempts to qualify for the 2016 Olympics in Rio De Janeiro.

Tauranga kayaker Andrew Roy competing at the Blue Lakes regatta in Rotorua on Sunday. Photo by: Jamie Troughton, Dscribe Media Services.

Roy leaves for Perth this Thursday to train with members of the Australian Olympic kayaking team for the next four months.

'I'm going to be the slowest there,” says Roy, 'so hopefully I can just chase them the whole time.

'Hopefully that will mean I can improve a lot faster than if I was training with someone who's the same speed as me.”

The 21-year-old says the first step is a national competition in February, when he hopes to gain selection into the world championships in August which would mean qualification for the Olympics.

'It's step by step really,” he says. 'I'm pretty excited. It [Australia] will definitely be a change of environment and will be a pretty good opportunity for me to try and excel and make some improvements in a short amount of time.”

Roy says the Olympics is the pinnacle of kayaking, so to pass each landmark towards his 2016 goal will mean the hard work has paid off.

'You definitely sacrifice a lot of time and the trip's going to cost quite a bit of money,” he adds.

'But in hindsight, it will be worth it and it will give me no excuses. I'll just throw everything at it.”

From now until the big games, Roy says it's going to be all about gaining placings to guarantee selection for the Olympics.

He expects training will involve lots of paddling and hitting the gym, as well as working on separate parts of the race.

'Although it's about a 35-second race, huge amounts of training still goes into it,” adds Roy.

'You're looking to make up those little one per cents. You can't just instantly get four or five seconds faster, you're aiming to improve in each section by 0.2 or 0.3 of a second – and that's going to add up across the whole race.”

Roy is also seeking sponsorship for the trip overseas.