Commodore's Cup Champions win Irish Sailor of the Year 2014
by Gail MacAllister 6 Mar 2015 18:28 GMT
6 March 2015
Simon Coveney TD, Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, with members from the ISA Mitsubishi Motors Club of the Year, Royal Cork Yacht Club © INPHO / Cathal Noonan
The outstanding performance of Anthony O'Leary in the 2014 Commodore's Cup and O'Leary's consistent pursuance of sailing excellence brings him and his team to win the celebrated 2014 ISA / Afloat Sailor of the Year Award at the 2014 Irish Sailing Awards, hosted by the Irish Sailing Association at the Royal College of Surgeons on Friday 6th March 2015.
In July 2014 Cork's Anthony O'Leary and team emerged overall winners of the Brewin Dolphin Commodore's Cup with a 174 point winning margin over 2nd place in this incredible 9 team event.
The Commodore's Cup would be considered the premier "Team Championships" for IRC racing and not an easy event to win. In addition to winning overall winner of the prestigious Commodore's Cup with Antix, a Ker 39, they also won the award for best in the inshore series, best individual boat and the Edward Heath Cup for a European team.
Anthony also brought the coveted trophy for the 2014 ISA All Ireland Sailing Champion back to his home club, Royal Cork Yacht Club in July 2014.
O'Leary and team were winners of the Afloat Sailor of the Month in June 2014 and stood for nomination for the 2014 ISA / Afloat Sailor of the Year Award alongside 12 other sailors and sailing teams.
The Royal College of Surgeons room was bursting with Olympian sailors, club commodores, class captains sail training principals, sailing champions and heroes. All gathered together to celebrate a year of incredible sailing at the Irish Sailing Awards, from racing to adventure cruising, both young and "not so young". There were four 2014 awards presented – ISA / Afloat Sailor of the Year, ISA Youth Sailor of the Year, ISA Mitsubishi Motors Club of the Year and ISA Training Centre of the Year. Minister Simon Coveney gave a heartfelt speech thanking the Irish sailors for their incredible achievements and he looks forward to a future of incredible development of our marine infrastructure in Ireland.
There is no doubt that the list of 2014 Young Sailor of the Year nominees packed quite a punch and the outstanding performance of Ireland's aspiring Olympian Finn Lynch in 2014 saw him win the title of ISA Youth Sailor of the Year. Finn brought the Under 19 Laser Standard World Sailing Champion back to his home club of National Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire. This lad from Carlow and member of the ISA's Development squad is one to watch for the future.
We asked each nominee what advise they would give to other aspiring young sailors. Finn's advice was "If you want to be competitive my advice would be to work harder than everyone else! Otherwise to just enjoy sailing is very important I think." Wise words to remind sailors that performance racing takes hard work and dedication, but racing is not for everyone and it is ok to sail for fun.
The 2014 ISA Mitsubishi Motors Club of the Year goes to the Royal Cork Yacht Club (RCYC) for a year of incredible sailing programmes from high performance events to grass roots initiatives. The organisers of the well-established and highly regarded Cork Week racing event, adapted entry costs and time commitment to make the event more accessible. While the Women's World Match Racing event demonstrated excellent organisation and show cased Ireland as a desirable World class sailing event destination. Their members also tasted glory at junior and youth levels with Séafra Guilfoyle's silver medal at the ISAF Youth Worlds in Portugal as one of the standout performances of Irish sailors in 2014. At grass roots RCYC started their ISA Women on the Water Ireland with an entire week of taster sessions in different types of boats at different times of the day, to give local ladies a chance to give a try, then followed up with dedicated coaching for adults to work on their sailing skills. Their commitment to quality and high standards is second to none and they have a special dedication to fulfilling the needs of their members from organising extra coaching for the keen young members to skippers information nights for the cruising sailors.
There were four nominations for Club of Year and it was a close call between them as each has proven to provide incredible support to Irish sailing in 2014, other nominees were Royal Irish Yacht Club, Baltimore Yacht Club and Galway Bay Sailing Club.
The 2014 ISA Training Centre of the Year goes to Mayo Sailing Club for their incredible commitment to training in 2014, through the employment of Noelle Doran to run their Junior Programme and creating a fully integrated online booking system, to facilitating many ISA workshops in the region and fully embracing all the ISA participation initiatives and developed disabled sailing access with a new hoist and accessible pontoon. After purchasing a fleet of ISA dinghies they can now offer sailing to non-boat owners. Communications, marketing and the standards shown at their centre inspection were exceptional. It will be interesting to see what they achieve in 2015 with all this as the foundation.
Other nominees were Irish National Sailing and Powerboating School in Dun Laoghaire, Gartan Outdoor Education Centre, Dungarvan Sailing Club and Baltimore Sailing Club with their second nomination for 2014.
The biggest heroes of all are the volunteers – 100's if not 1000's of them dedicated to safety, support, coaching and more throughout our coastline and inland waterways. Irish sailing would not be where it is today without them. Thanks goes out to every one of them.
Our thanks goes to Mitsubishi Motors, Dublin Port Company and Parasol Sun Protection for their support of this event.