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Displaying items by tag: Vasilij Zbogar

#Tokyo2020 - Three-time Olympic medallist Vasilij Žbogar has joined Irish Sailing’s high performance squad to coach the men’s Laser team.

Žbogar will take over coaching for Finn Lynch and Liam Glynn’s Tokyo 2020 aspirations on a team set to be bolstered later this year by the addition of Ewan McMahon and Johnny Durcan.

The quartet will benefit from a wealth of experience eon the part of the decorated Slovenian sailor. Making his Olympic debut in Sydney in 2000, Žbogar won his first Olympic medal with a bronze in Athens four years later. 

When he took silver in Beijing 2008, Žbognar became only the third man in history to win two Olympic Laser medals.

After a move to the Finn class, Žbogar kept up his high-performing ways with a strong sixth-place finish at London 2012, a bronze in the 2015 Finn Worlds and silver at his fifth and final Olympics in Rio two years ago.

Over his 16 years at sailing’s pinnacle, Vasilij Žbogar became one of Slovenia’s most successful athletes — and now Ireland’s Laser squad has the chance to benefit form his expertise.

More on this on the Afloat.ie podcast with team manager James O'Callaghan here.

Published in Tokyo 2020

Coastal Notes Coastal Notes covers a broad spectrum of stories, events and developments in which some can be quirky and local in nature, while other stories are of national importance and are on-going, but whatever they are about, they need to be told.

Stories can be diverse and they can be influential, albeit some are more subtle than others in nature, while other events can be immediately felt. No more so felt, is firstly to those living along the coastal rim and rural isolated communities. Here the impact poses is increased to those directly linked with the sea, where daily lives are made from earning an income ashore and within coastal waters.

The topics in Coastal Notes can also be about the rare finding of sea-life creatures, a historic shipwreck lost to the passage of time and which has yet many a secret to tell. A trawler's net caught hauling more than fish but cannon balls dating to the Napoleonic era.

Also focusing the attention of Coastal Notes, are the maritime museums which are of national importance to maintaining access and knowledge of historical exhibits for future generations.

Equally to keep an eye on the present day, with activities of existing and planned projects in the pipeline from the wind and wave renewables sector and those of the energy exploration industry.

In addition Coastal Notes has many more angles to cover, be it the weekend boat leisure user taking a sedate cruise off a long straight beach on the coast beach and making a friend with a feathered companion along the way.

In complete contrast is to those who harvest the sea, using small boats based in harbours where infrastructure and safety poses an issue, before they set off to ply their trade at the foot of our highest sea cliffs along the rugged wild western seaboard.

It's all there, as Coastal Notes tells the stories that are arguably as varied to the environment from which they came from and indeed which shape people's interaction with the surrounding environment that is the natural world and our relationship with the sea.