Eve McMahon narrowly missed her fourth international title this summer in Portugal this afternoon but takes a silver medal at the U21 Laser/ILCA Youth World Championships.
The Irish Sailor of the Year's achievement marks the best U21 world championship result for Ireland in the ILCA 6 (formerly Laser Radial) class.
McMahon secured her medal after another day with no racing at the venue. A total of seven races were completed over the week due to a lack of wind.
McMahon also won the U19 category.
As regular Afloat readers know, already this summer, the young Howth YC sailor achieved a hat-trick of gold medals, winning the ILCA 6 Youth World Championships in Texas, the World Sailing Youth World Championships in the Netherlands and the ILCA6 Youth European Championships in Greece.
Eve McMahon on the podium for Ireland at the U21 ILCA Youth World Championships in Portugal Photo: ILCA
McMahon was competing in a tough fleet with some older and more seasoned girls who have been to the Olympic Games.
And it was a challenging event; there were only seven races over the series, and most of them were in very light, fickle sailing conditions.
The Howth teen had a couple of big setbacks early on when she had a race that she finished quite well, inside the top ten, that was then abandoned when she finished the race, and then she got two yellow flag penalties in race three.
So any mistake after that point would have given her 81 points on top of her overall score and put her way down the fleet, so there was a lot of pressure on her not to make any mistakes.
The overall winner of the championship was Eline Verstraelen of Belgium in the girls and Ole Schweckendiek of Germany in the boys ILCA 7 (Laser) fleet.
In the boys fleet, ILCA 7 (Laser) Irish sailors Tom Higgins finished in 10th place, Jamie McMahon in 24th and Jonathan O’Shaughnessy in 106th. Irish sailor Ellen Barbour finished 68th.
For full results are here
