The racing in the 2024 Sailing Olympiad gets under way in Marseille on Sunday with a determined Irish team in three classes, and across-the-board support at all levels at home for our young sailors. The Olympic effect is notably inter-twined with our sailing scene, as the President of national authority Irish Sailing, John Twomey of Kinsale, is a multiple participant who has been in the Paralympics as an athlete, and then in sailing, to log a record 11 times as an Olympian, with three medals won.
Before that, Robert Dix of Howth and Malahide, President from 2005-2008, raced a 470 in the 1976 Olympics in Canada. And the late Peter Gray of Dun Laoghaire, President 1985-1988, raced the Flying Dutchman with Johnny Hooper in the 1960 Olympics at Rome, with the sailing staged in some style at Naples. There, they recorded Ireland's first individual race win, but as it was by default, it's something we'll need to elucidate further down the line.
Three times medallist John Twomey racing the Sonar at Rio in 2016 in his final (of 11) Olympiads, crewed by Ian Costello and Austin O'Carroll
IRSH LINKS TO RE-BIRTH OF THE GAMES
For the intriguing thing is that a leading sailing figure from Ireland had links with the sailing Olympics from the re-birth of the ancient Games in Athens in 1896. The sailing there was in a rather rudimentary form, and much hindered by the persistent presence of the Meltemi, blowing hard from the north through the Aegean Sea. This kept the small mixed fleet in port at Piraeus, and no clear results emerged.
But as the re-birth and further thinking for development of the Games was centred around co-founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin in Paris, the staging of the second Olympic Games in Paris in 1900 saw sailing's involvement much more structured, with the highly active, influential and cosmopolitan Cercle de la Voile de Paris setting the pace.
Handing on the baton. Annalise Murphy at a fund-raiser for 2024 Olympians Rob Dickson (centre) and Sean Waddilove
THE LORD FROM LONGFORD
Step forward Bernard Arthur William Patrick Hastings Forbes (1874-1948) 8th Earl of Granard, of Castle Forbes in the County of Longford. We won't dwell on how his family came to have such extensive land-holdings in the North Midlands, but by the 1890s they included sailing among their many interests. Although this sometimes resulted in unwelcome pressure from Castle Forbes upon the North Shannon Yacht Club to race on the small and tree-surrounded Lough Forbes beside their castle, rather than the larger and much more open and sporty Lough Boderg 5 km upriver, it did mean that when he went off for a hedonistic time in the City of Light in the 1890s, he brought a sailing interest with him which propelled him into active and much-enjoyed membership of Cercle de la Voile.
It's not a film set. Honest. This is Castle Forbes beside the Shannon in County Longford
That in turn led him to present the Cercle with the absurdly magnificent silver trophy that became the One Ton Cup on 11th October 1898, to be raced with an international entry list at Meulan on the Seine by centreboard boats of around 7 metres in length whose all-up weight with crew was One Ton. The first series took place at Meulan on 2nd May 1899, and moved racing under sail on the Seine up to an entirely new level, with Eugene Laverne's Belouga beating the English challenger Vectis in a three race series.
In 1900, nine new One Tonners had been built by Cercle members to compete for the right to race for France in the One Ton Cup, and Eugene Laverne's Sidi-Fakkir won all down the line, being selected and then beating the British challenger, the Linton Hope-designed Scotia 1, but only after a five race series.
GRANARD-INSPIRED INITIATIVE
The Granard-inspired initiative had worked so well that the One Ton Class setup on the Seine at Meulan was simply moved, still at Meulan, into the Paris Olympics a few weeks later in 1900 to provide one of the key sailing classes. By this time Scotia I from the Seaview Yacht Club was in fine form, and won the Gold Medal helmed by Lorne Currie (hence that name Scotia I), crewed by John Gretton, designer Linton Hope (who was soon working on the plans for the Belfast Lough and Lough Erne Fairy Class which appeared in 1902) and Algernon Maudsley.
"Absurdly magnificent". The Earl of Granard's One Ton Cup from 1898 has played a uniquely pivotal role in some of world sailing's most significant developments
As it was a fleet event rather than a match race, One Ton Cup winner Eugene Laverne was not at his best, and finished 9th, while up at the sharp end Germany's Aschenbrodel, helmed by Paul Wiesner, took the Silver and France's Emile Michelet was on bronze.
Being Olympic sailing in its infancy, some reports suggest that there were several races, with each one seeing the winner get a gold, while Eugene Laverne received a Silver. But either way Scotia I, ultimately inspired by an idea put forward by the Earl of Granard, was the first Olympic Gold Medal-winning boat, although the racing in the Seine was later to be eclipsed in 1900 by larger classes getting more satisfactory Olympic racing on the sea at le Havre.
SUCCESS HAS MANY FATHERS
Success has many fathers while failure is an orphan, and thus the Earl of Granard's name does not always come up in lights in the history of the successful launching of sailing in a serious form in the 1900 Olympics. But the fact that he presented the One Ton Cup in October 1898 to the CVP, with a clear notion of how it should be used, resulted in a developing series format in 1899 which had come on so well in 1900 that much of it was taken up by the Olympics, even unto using the same boats as the One Ton Cup.
Subsequently, the Granard influence spread elsewhere in sailing, as the One Ton Cup was to have further significant impact as an international trophy for the 6 Metre Class, and then in 1965 it began its great years as the basis for a set of level rating classes in international offshore racing, something which produced some really excellent boats and absolutely tremendous sport.
As for the Earl, being a young man about Paris in the Naughty Nineties seems to have encouraged his liberal outlook, for back in Ireland he espoused Home Rule, and after Independence was clarified in 1922, he was appointed by the Taoiseach W T Cosgrave to the Oireachtas as a Senator, registering as Nationalist.
The Earl of Granard served as Commodore of the National YC in Dun Laoghaire from 1931 to 1941. Photo courtesy NYC
COMMODORE OF NATIONAL YACHT CLUB
This was no brief enthusiasm, for in 1930 when the 1870-funded Edward Yacht Club in Dun Laoghaire was fading, it looked to revive itself as the National Yacht Club, and the Earl of Granard willingly took up the post as first Commodore. He provided a personal cornerstone of international status for ten years until the club was in reasonably good health, and Dun Laoghaire's own T J Hamilton could take over the senior post.
Thus the fact that the National Yacht Club is currently attracting the attention of Dun Laoghaire folk and their visitors with a banner encouraging their own 2024 Olympian, Finn Lynch, and his team-mates, is more than appropriate. After all, they are home to the most recent winner of an Irish Sailing Olympic Sailing Medal, Annalise Murphy who won Silver in Rio in 2016.
The Olympic spirit continues to thrive at the NationalYacht Club, as the facade currently reveals
But way beyond that, and way beyond the Olympic dedication and performance of stars like Johnny Hooper, the National Yacht Club can claim to have been closely linked to the man who contributed much of the format, and the concept of the boats, to the first proper sailing Olympiad in 1900.
GLITZY WEDDING'S UNEXPECTED CONSEQUENCES
But life not being really fair, today the Earl of Granard is generally associated with being involved with the unexpected consequences of a glitzy wedding at Castle Forbes in 1911. The American branch of the family – hugely successful, they made zillions of dollars and founded Forbes Business Magazine – came over in force, and brought a trainload of gifts, including a wicker-basket with some delightful little American native animals.
The basket was opened on the lawn, and out hopped five American grey squirrels. They hopped merrily away straight into the woods, and although the Shannon prevented them moving further west, there was nothing to stop them moving east. This they did with such breeding enthusiasm that they've long since been condemned as a pest, requiring eradication.
Meanwhile interest in Olympic sailing was developing in Cork, where the Royal Munster YC's Commodore Arthur Sharman Crawford (top man in brewery Beamish & Crawford, with an inspiring involvement in developing technical training in Cork) may have been successfully racing a Cork Harbour OD at home, but he'd a parallel sailing life in Cowes where has was in the frame in several classes over the years, and in 1914 he appeared in he Solent with the first Bermuda-rigged William Fife III-designed International 8 Metre, Ierne III.
1916 GAMES CANCELLED
The class was in line to feature at the 1916 Olympic Games at Berlin, with the sailing expected on the Baltic, but almost immediately the Great War of 1914-18 broke out. There was no question of the Olympics or most other major sporting events being held, and Ierne III was put into storage in a Solent boatyard for the duration.
Royal Munster YC Commodore Arthur Sharman Crawford's pioneering Bermuda-rigged Int. 8 Metre Ierne III in July 1914. She was created with the planned 1916 Olympics in Germany in mind, but when World War I and the Irish War of Independence pushed such things aside, she was moth-balled. And when she won the Gold Medal in the 1920 Olympics at Antwerp in Belgium, it was under new owners and sailing for Norway
GOLD MEDAL FOR IERNE III
By the time international peace returned, Ireland had her own wars going on and Sharman Crawford had other things on his mind maintaining his position in Cork. So with the 1920 Olympics scheduled for Antwerp in Belgium, Ierne III was sold to a Norwegian owner-skipper, and off he went to Antwerp and the Olympics. He won a sailing Gold Medal, leaving us today contemplating one of the greatest "What ifs?" in our Irish Olympic sailing story.
Ireland achieved Independence of sorts with the establishment of the Free State in 1922, but many governments and national authorities – out of deference to the still-powerful British Empire – were slow to give it full recognition. With obstacles being put in the way of separate Irish participation in some sports at the 1924 Olympics back in Paris, the new government encouraged the staging of the Tailteann Games in Dublin, partly as an alternative, and the most enthusiastic response to the "yachting" events being staged in Dublin Bay came from the unlikely direction of Lough Derg on the Shannon.
The Shannon sailing community probably provided more officers per head for Britain's Indian Army than any comparable group in Ireland, and they were diligent servants of the Empire in other areas. Thus they reflected the fact that yachting in Ireland retained a British outlook for many years after 1922, and the UK's Yacht Racing Association – later the RYA – was to be recognized as Ireland's sailing authority for many years yet.
TEST TIME FOR SHANNON ONE DESIGNS
But in 1922 the new Shannon One Designs had appeared, and were giving particularly good racing with Lough Derg Yacht Club. The opportunity to strut their stuff on the national stage in the Tailteann Yacht Race on Dublin Bay was too good to miss, and in 1924 five of the SODs from Derg were shipped on various railway lines to the convenient goods yard in Dun Laoghaire, and their owners and crew followed in various ways.
Shannon One Designs in a breeze on Lough Derg. When the class was two years old in 1924, they demonstrated their seagoing abilities in Dublin Bay at the sailing events for the Tailteann Games
There was only one race for the Tailteann Games, with Dublin Bay in a lumpy mood with a brisk easterly, and most of the Water Wags stayed in port. But having travelled to be there with their base at the Royal Irish YC, the SODs gave it a go, and their supposed flimsy lakeboats wriggled over those uniquely steep Dublin Bay waves so well that the Gold Medal went back ro Dromineer.
It may not have been the Olympics, but it kept the flame alive and continued the tradition of Shannon sailing having its own direct link – started by the Earl of Granard – to the developing Olympic movement and its ideals. Although no formalized Irish team involvement featured in the rest of the Olympics before World War II in 1939 brought another halt, Olympic sailing attitudes were particularly evident in Cork, from where Captain Jimmy Payne cut a swathe and home and abroad through the top levels of the rapidly-growing International 12 class.
The International 12 dinghy continues to be very popular – with new boats being built – in Belgium and Italy. In the 1920s and '30s, this was a frontline class in Ireland, with James Payne of Cork winning the World Championship
GRANDOISE 1936 OLYMPICS
The grandiose Nazi Germany staging of the 1936 Games in Berlin – with the sailing at Kiel – moved the entire "five ring circus" onto a new level of public interest, international pride, and very intense competition. So as World War II drew to a close, there was high-powered planning already under way to ensure that the 1948 Games in London, with the sailing at Torquay, would stand up to comparison with Kiel.
For Irish sailing, this was both an opportunity and a dilemma. The conveniently located venue increased calls for proper Irish representation, but the fact of Ireland's neutrality during the War was a bone of contention, even if tens of thousands of thousands of Irish men and women had served with distinction in the Allied forces.
1946 DEVELOPMENTS
1946 brought the formation of the Irish Dinghy Racing Assocaition and an almost immediate leap into modern dinghies, particularly in Dublin Bay, and its rising status encouraged thoughts of another independent group to promote an Irish team for the 1948 Sailing Olympiad.
In those days the real movers and shakers in Irish sailing development were a small but busy group whose interests spread – seemingly effortlessly – across many areas of the sport, such that we find several of the same names occurring in the founding of the Irish Cruising Club in 1929, the IDRA in 1946, the temporary convenience of the Irish Sailing Federation to promote the Irish Olympic squad in 1947-48, and the Inland Waterways Association of Ireland in 1954.
Billy Mooney of Howth sailing (1919-1943) and subsequently Dun Laoghaire. His amiable appearance disguised a will of steel in his ambitions to develop and progress Irish sailing in all its forms
Busiest of them all was Billy Mooney, who'd been a lead figure in all aspects of Howth sailing (even unto the Howth 17s) from 1919 until 1943, but then with the death of his first wife, he and his two talented sailing sons Jimmy and Bobby moved across to Dun Laoghaire, where they soon were making a lively input into the Royal St George YC and Dublin Bay SC.
RORC LINKS
Billy Mooney had long had close contacts with the RORC through his friendship with a founder member, the late Harry Donegan (1880 – 1940) of Cork, and those RORC links were used for a ground-breaking RORC/ICC initiative in 1946, when the limits of an offshore race so close after the end of World War II (thre were stil mines about) were overcome by having an RORC/ICC Race from Falmouth to Dun Laoghaire, and then another joint venture from Dun Laoghaire to Cork.
For 1947, Mooney was even more ambitious, as he wanted to bring in his many friends in Scotland's 1909-established Clyde Cruising Club. A programme emerged whereby the RORC would race from Falmouth to Dun Laoghaire, possibly with some ICC boats taking part, while the Cork ICC contingent would have their own race direct to Dublin Bay. Meanwhile the Clyde Cr C would race south to Dun Laoghaire for all fleets to then race together back to the Clyde.
TRAGEDY AFTER FOUNDING OF IRISH YACHTING FEDERATION IN 1947
With the goodwill generated by this exceptional maritime gathering in Dun Laoghaire, Billy and Jimmy Mooney and fellow-minded friends like leading Shannon/Dublin Bay sailor Alf Delany had one final move to make. They would use the sense of occasion and camaraderie to formally establish an Irish Yachting Federation, with the prime purpose of sending a proper national team to the 1948 Olympics in Torquay.
SENIOR OPINION FORMERS
For some of the long-established yachting opinion-formers in what many still thought of as Kingstown, this would have been regarded as heresy, had they known of it. But it came about quietly, with the founding meeting held on the evening of Thursday August 7th 1947 in the neutral setting of the Royal Marine Hotel.
And like all good meetings, it went smoothly to a pre-arranged programme, with the unanimously-elected Chairman of the new Irish Yachting Federation being Harry Donegan Jnr of Cork, who very appropriately had arrived under sail to race on to the Clyde in his Fife-designed and built Clyde 50 Sybil.
The Sybil in the foreground of the start of the 1946 Dublin Bay to Cork Race
"Young Harry" was a brilliant choice, for although only 41, he was popular with all shades of opinion as a founder member of the RORC, Honorary Secretary of the Lifeboats in Cork, the senior partner in the family's prestigious law firm, Vice Commodore of the Royal Munster YC and the Irish Cruising Club, an active member of St John's Ambulance Brigade, and a Commander in the Maritime Inscription to provide support to the Naval Service.
WEATHER LIKE WINTER
There should have been a balmy summer's evening to celebrate this significant breakthrough, but it was like winter, with a rising westerly to northwest gale. Sybil was anchored in Dun Laoghaire Harbour within easy reach of the National and Royal St George yacht clubs, but this meant she lay in the area of steepest seas when the wind was really strong from WNW. Heading out to sleep aboard as everyone did in those days with a cruiser-racer, the normally very able dinghy was overcome and capsized, and though Young Harry ensured that all his shipmates were saved, he – a non-swimmer – was drowned.
Harry Donegan junior as sketched by Billy McBride from memory after his untimely death in 1947
It brought a great sadness throughout the Irish sailing community and abroad, and was a profound shock for the normally ebullient Billy Mooney. But by the Autumn he was being encouraged again to set up an Irish team, even though there were some old dinosaurs in the Irish yachting establishment who thought that sending a separate Irish sailing team to the first post-war Olympics in Britain would be a gross impertinence.
BRITISH OLYMPIC SAILOR FROM NORTH
For them, this seemed even more the case in late season, as it was already known by then that the British helm in the International Dragon Class at Torquay would be Eric Strain of Royal North of Ireland YC at Cultra, first winner of the Dragon Gold Cup in fiercely-competitive racing on the Clyde in 1947.
Nevertheless Billy Mooney and Alf Delany went over to London in the Autumn of 1947 to test the waters in a meeting with the Yacht Racing Association and their Olympic Committee, and everything changed. The YRA and their Olympians were mad keen to have as many teams as possible to celebrate the post-war revival, and were ready to bend over backwards to help an Irish squad get there.
The Swallow Class still race at Itchenor on Chichester Harbour in the south of England. In 1948, they were used as the two-man biat in the Olymics, and it emerged that although the design was attributed to shipbuilder Tom Thorneycroft, the lines were all created by his draftsman O'Brien Kennedy
The importance of the numbers game lay partly in the fact that, to signal a new era, the YRA had discarded any German-designed boats used in the 1936 Olympics, and had come up with new British boats for 1948's Olympiad, with the 26ft Swallow keelboat being the two-man craft, while the sloop-rigged 12ft Uffa Fox-designed Firefly dinghy was the designated single-hander.
For other nations, they may have seemed a strange choice for duo or solo, as post-Olympics the Swallow went on to be a successful three or even four person boat, while the Firefly was of course a two-person dinghy. But for training purposes there was already a fleet of Fireflies in Dun Laoghaire, thanks largely to IDRA President Douglas Heard's long-standing friendship with Uffa Fox.
O'BRIEN KENNEDY ACTUAL DESIGNER OF OLYMPIC SWALLOW OD
And as for the Swallow, although it was listed as the personal design of Southampton shipbuilder Tom Thorneycroft based on his experiences of successfully racing with the Bembridge Redwings, it emerged that he had simply jotted down a list of requirements and some very rough sketches, and given them to the shipyard's leading draftsman George O'Brien Kennedy, well known to the Irish as Brian Kennedy.
Since then, O'Brien Kennedy had set up his own boatyard on Poole Harbour to build Swallows and other boats, and as he would be taking half a dozen Swallows down to Torquay for the Olympics, he earmarked one for the Irish effort, to be helmed by Alf Delany crew by Hugh Allen, while Jimmy Mooney would have the challenge of sailing the Firefly single-handed in the year in which a young Dane called Paul Elvstrom was to make his debut.
FRAUGHT PROCESS
But things weren't so smooth for the Olympic effort in Dragons from the other end of Ireland on behalf of the British campaign. When the British Olympic Council heard that Eric Strain would be sailing the Scandinavian-built Dragon Ceres, they requested she be replaced with a British-built boat. It was the sort of woolly-minded committee-based decision that, decades later, made the creation of Francis Chichester's Gypsy Moth IV such a fraught process, and it was decidedly counter-productive.
Ceres I may have been cheap and cheerful, but she was light and extraordinarily fast. Ceres II may have been exquisitely built, but she was so clearly overweight that in mid-Olympics – with Eric Strain and his crew on course to miss an Olympic Medal by one place – Uffa Fox came on board and threw overboard everything that wasn't absolutely essential, but it was too little too late.
Irish Dinghy Racing Association founding President Douglas Heard with innovative designer Uffa Fox. Photo: RStGYC
Irish fortunes were mixed in 1948, but at least the idea of Ireland having its own team in the sailing Olympics had been established, and the Irish Dinghy Racing Association became a sort of de facto national sailing authority. But the Irish economy was in such dire straits during much of the 1950s that any Olympic effort was ultra-economical, with Alf Delany going to the 1952 Helsinki Games to race the Finn as a solo effort in almost every sense of the word.
SOLITARY NIGHT WALK DOWN A COUNTRY ROAD
The programme to select a Finn sailor to go to Melbourne in 1956 – when the Olympic ideal was finally to come alive for Ireland with Ronnie Delany's Gold Medal – involved potential selected sailors having to travel Ireland with camping gear. As the selection became more focused, Somers Payne of Cork took the train to Dublin for part of the selection series in Malahide. His train was late and he missed the last bus to Malahide. He walked instead, through the night along what was then a country road, and in due course made the top of the points table and took the Melbourne place.
For the 1960 Games in Rome with the sailing in Naples, the influence of Clayton Love Jnr's boundless energy began to be felt, with the Irish Dinghy Racing Association well on the road to becoming the Irish Yachting Association, and a three boat team spearheaded by Dun Laoghaire's Peter Gray and Johnny Hooper racing the Flying Dutchman, which basically was the biggest over-lapping genoa you ever saw, with a rather elegant boat hull somewhere under it.
Clayton Love Jnr, IYA President and Manager of the 1960 Irish Olympic Sailing Team, when the sailing events of the Rome Games were held in Naples
DEFAULT WIN IN NAPLES
In one race they were chasing the Italian star for the lead, and when they noted he had retained it to the finish by missing out a mark, they assumed it would be a routine matter of reporting it and thereby get the first Irish win in an Olympic race by default.
Not a bit of it. The Italian hosts didn't want to believe anything about their hero taking a short cut. It was only when a witness from the US Navy was brought in to provide incontrovertible evidence to the effect that the alleged winner has strayed from the path of righteousness that finally, the Irish win was allowed in niggardly sort of way.
Irish party. 1980 Silver Medallist David Wilkins (with crew Jamie Wilkinson) receives his award from IOC Chairman Lord Killanin
Thus the first straightforward win was achieved by David Wilkins of Malahide, Ireland's most dedicated Olympic sailor, racing the Tempest keelboat/dinghy in Kiel in 1972, when the main Games were in Munich, and Germany was pulling out all the stops to make their return to Olympic hosting a well-run yet relaxed and non-nationalistic affair.
The Kiel Olympic Regatta was a big deal, and I found myself there on my own, journalistically speaking, trying to cover racing on three different course areas and then somehow filing reports to just about everything that appeared daily on paper bac in Ireland. So inevitably I was on a different course area when Wilkins and the Tempest recorded Ireland's first straightforward Olympic race win.
But happily the late great Jack Knights, Prince of Sailing Journos, had been with the Tempests, and as we walked up from the press boats towards the Media Centre he gave me the entire blow-by-blow story which duly appeared to gratifying approval back in Ireland first thing in the morning.
SILVER IN MOSCOW
Nothing ever seems utterly straightforward when the Olympic juggernaut is all-dominant. So when David Wilkins and Jamie Wilkinson finally pulled off a medal, the Silver, in the Moscow Games in 1980, with the sailing in Soviet-occupied Estonia, neither the British nor there American teams were there in protest against the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. Is this groundhog day or what? But Jack Knights gave their success his seal of approval, and it has only improved with the passage of time.
Annalise Murphy returns to Dun Laoghaire with her 2016 Silver Medal
"A wave of euphoria" – sailors from all over Ireland flocked to Dun Laoghaire in August 2016 to welcome Annalise Murphy and her Silver Medal back to the National Yacht Club. Photo: W M Nixon
Yet even so, nothing really prepared the sailors of Ireland for the wave of euphoria which swept up everyone when Annalise Murphy won the Silver in Rio in 2016, with absolutely all the heavy hitters present and correct, and determined they should win instead. The spectacular and televisually-accessible setting meant the whole country was well aware of what was at stake, and we sailed with her every inch of the way to the finish.
FOUR YOUNG PEOPLE AND THREE BOATS
Now we find ourselves with four young people and three boats carrying the hopes of a country on their efforts in the difficult waters off Marseilles. For the next twelve days, the focus is total. Frequently, they have travelled a lonely and sometimes dark road to be in this extraordinary circumstance, where the finale is played out on what is, by comparison, a floodlit super-highway.
We wish them well.
"A very effective billboard with a fine clubhouse attached" – spreading the message at Howth. Photo: W M Nixon
Here it is again: let's hear it for 49er sailor Sean Waddilove (left) ILCA sailor and already U21Champion 2024 Eve McMahon (centre), and 49er sailor Rob Dickson. Photo: W M Nixon
