Eve McMahon is “Irish Sailor of the Year 2022”, making it into the top national position for the second successive year after the ILCA 6 sailor’s international performance was of such a standard that she even managed to better her exceptional showing in 2021.
For although 2021 had its special challenges as the limited international programme worked its way around the changing patterns and restrictions of the global pandemic, 2022 brought the fresh vigour and reinforced competition of emerging action.
Yet despite this, the now 18-year-old Howth sailor’s tally brought home no less than three Gold Medals from majors on both sides of Europe, and from both sides of the Atlantic. So although she first took the “Sailor of the Month” title in April 2022 by marking the beginning of her exit process from the Junior scene with a domination of the ILCA 6 class in the breezy Youth Nationals at Ballyholme, it was entirely within the month of July that she amassed the three Golds on the international stage.
Portrait of the Gold Medallist ready to party
During the two-and-a-half months between those peaks of achievement, she had to focus on the demands of the Leaving Cert. Keeping a level head in such demanding circumstances would challenge even the most academically-inclined, yet at the beginning of July she reappeared in top-level athletic sailing with joyful enthusiasm, and took herself off to Greece for the European Youth ILCA 6 Championship, which she won going away by a clear 36 points.
School’s Out! – celebrating the 36 point victory in Greece only days after finishing her Leaving Cert. Photo: Thom Tow
The stakes were then raised for the Allianz Youth Worlds at The Hague in The Netherlands in mid-July. Yet she led the ferociously-challenging 55-strong ILCA 6 fleet from the get-go, and her worst result – a very discardable sixth – didn’t occur until the final day with its flukey winds, by which time the Gold Medal was right in the frame.
There was barely a pause for breath before the focus shifted across the Atlantic and the opulent setting of the Houston Yacht Club in Texas on the Gulf of Mexico for the ILCA 6 Youth Worlds. All this was still being done within the timeframe of July, with the added challenges of extended transoceanic lines of communication in a pandemic-emergent situation, and the fierce heat and super-bright sunshine of Texas in high summer, coupled with the fact that the impressive host club would naturally have been hoping for a home win.
A perfect start for IRL 216111 at Houston. Eve is comfortably clear of the boat to lee and is already lee-bowing 204624 on her weather quarter, while the apparently well-placed two boats at the other end of the start are being lifted in a new line of wind which will further improve the position of Eve’s group when they reach it within half a minute.
But as Eve has shown in previous majors on the sometimes slightly partisan location of Lake Garda, she is well able to face the added challenge of “alien” status, and coming into the final race on Saturday, July 31st, she clinched the Gold with two bullets.
Going well at Houston, with an impressive array of boats astern
Occuring as it did around midnight in Ireland, people wondered if they were dreaming, with the more pessimistic saying that if something sounds too good to be true, then that’s the way it is. But it was soon doubly proven to be true when Ireland’s latest sailing Gold Medal with its holder returned with the small but extremely effective Irish squad to Dublin airport and a rapturous welcome.
Once a sailor gets to this level, he or she is at the heart of an intense little industry, and it’s a supportive family background and comprehensive back-up structure that enables Eve McMahon’s formidable natural sailing talent, impressive personality and focused intelligence to make the leap from being a schoolgirl to becoming an acknowledged international sailing star, on the cusp of adult competition.
“It’s for real….” Eve McMahon welcomed back home through Dublin Airport from Texas by her parents Vicky and Jim
She is into an entirely new chapter in her sailing career and lifepath. But for now, the fact that an 18-year-old can achieve that one glorious month of unrivalled across-the-board success on two continents makes her “Sailor of the Year 2022” at every level.
